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TENNYSON'S LANE, FARRINGFORD. 



<r-_ Si^ 



THE PRINCESS 



^ IHctiltS 



ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 



EDITED, WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES, 

BY 

ANDREW J. GEORGE, M.A. 

Department of English, High School, Newton, Mass. 



'/ believe in progress^ and I would conserve the rights of man " 

Tennyson to Aubrey de Vere 






BOSTON, U.S.A. 
D. C. HEATH & CO., PUBLISHERS 






Copyright, 1896, 
By Andrew J. George. 



/:^-^f^rf 



TYPOGRAPHY BY C. J. PETERS & SON, BOSTON. 



TO MY MOTHER. 



The seasons change, the winds they shift and veer ; 

The grass of yesteryear 

Is dead ; the birds depart, the groves decay ; 

Empires dissolve and peoples disappear : 

Song passes not away. 

Captains and conquerors leave a little dust, 

And kings a dubious legend of their reign ; 

The swords of Caesars, they are less than rust : 

The poet doth remain. 

Dead is Augustus, Maro is alive; 

And thou, the Mantuan of our age and cHme, 

Like Virgil shall thy race and tongue survive. 

Bequeathing no less honeyed words to time. 

Embalmed in amber of eternal rhyme, 

And rich with all the sweets from every Muse's hive; 

While to the measure of the cosmic rune 

For purer ears thou shalt thy lyre attune, 

And heed no more the hum of idle praise 

In that calm our tumults cannot reach, 

Master who crown'st our immelodious days 

With flower of perfect speech.'" 

William Watson. 



PREFACE. 



■' For, Ah! so much he has to do ; 
Be painter and musician too ! 
The aspect of the moment show, 
The feeling of the moment know! 
The aspect, not I grant, express 
Clear as the painter's art can dress; 
The feeling, not I grant, explore 
So deep as the musician's lore — 
But clear as words can make revealing, 
And deep as words can follow feeling. 
But, Ah ! then comes his sorest spell 
Of toil — he must life's movemc7ti tell \ 
The thread which binds it all in one. 
And not its separate parts alone. 
The movement he must tell of life, 
Its pain and pleasure, rest and strife ; 
His eye must travel down, at full. 
The long, unpausing spectacle ; 
With faithful, unrelaxing force 
Attend it from its primal source ; 
From change to change and year to year 
Attend it of its mid career, 
Attend it to the last repose, 
And solemn silence of its close." 

The literary history of the nineteenth century presents to 
us no more interesting or suggestive study than that of the 
development of the mind and art of Alfred Tennyson. 

V 



vi PREFACE. 

Although Tennyson was from the first a master of 
melody, who had a wealth of ' delicious metres and rhyth- 
mic susurrus,' yet a half century elapsed before the simple 
melodies passed into the deep-throated music of the grand 
march in the Homeric blank verse. The sweet singer of 
the early years in the century became in these later years 
the ' Voice of the age,' — 

' Dow'r'd with the Doric grace, the Mantuan mien, 
With Arno's depth and Avon's golden sheen, 
Singer to whom the singing ages cUmb convergent,' 

From the time when that precious little volume, Poems 
by Two Brothers, was published in 1827, until he com- 
pleted his work, the genius of Tennyson passed naturally, 
by simple stages, through the three great periods which 
reflect the universal order of development in the literature 
of poetry : the lyric, — cabinet picture and simple idyl ; 
the epic, — sustained story and philosophical study ; the 
dramatic, — picturesque presentations of great political 
and intellectual movements. Each of these periods com- 
prises nearly a quarter of a century, during which the 
melodies become charged with thought ; the events of the 
simple ballad and idyl evolve into the complicated story ; 
and finally we have the drama of action and of passion on 
the one hand, and on the other the simple pastoral of heart- 
easing mirth, with its wood-note wild and scent of meadow 
flowers. The whole mighty movement was characterized 
by the magical music, the majestic passion, and the pro- 
phetic vision of Me7'lin and the Gleam — a poem sacred in 
its personal revelation, and one which calls to us in this 
age of sordid realism to follow the light that never was 
on sea or land, in the pursuit of which to live and to die 
is to have attained. 



PREFACE. vii 

* Not of the sunlight, 
Not of the moonhght, 
Not of the starlight ! 
O young Mariner, 
Down to the haven, 
Call your companions, 
Launch your vessel, 
And crowd your canvas. 
And, ere it vanishes 
Over the margin, 
After it, follow it, 
Follow the Gleam.' 

Although the volume of 1830 and that of 1833 contained 
much that has become immortal, yet literary fame hardly 
began with Tennyson until the vqjumes of 1842 appeared 
with the rich blossoms of poetic springtide. From that 
time his fame was assured, despite the mutterings of the 
Neiv Timons, the anathemas of the U^ould-be Popes, and 
the spiteful letters of Foolish Bai'ds. 

Notwithstanding the fact that these volumes secured for 
him national recognition in the form of a pension of two 
hundred pounds (^200) a year, in order that his faculties 
might not be ' diverted from their proper use by the sordid 
anxiety of a struggle for existence,' yet his friends were 
sure that still greater rewards awaited him. Wordsworth 
voiced the general feeling when he said that it was now 
time for Tennyson to produce a masterpiece of vigorous 
and sustained power. Such a work was even then in mind, 
and five years later The Princess found • its fit audience 
though few,' 

The publication of The Princess in 1847 marked the 
beginning of a new period of the poet's work, — that in 
which we have the four poems containing Tennyson's most 



viii PREFACE. 

complete contribution, and his most characteristic note. 
Mr. Stopford Brooke has said, ' The Princess is the most 
delightful of the larger poems of Tennyson ; /;/ Memoria7n 
is the most complete ; Maud is the loveliest, most remem- 
berable ; and The Idylls of the King is the most ambitious.' 

The Princess was both a history and a prophecy. While 
it lacked nothing of the lyric and picturesque qualities of 
the earlier poems, it contained the germs of that political 
and ethical philosophy which we now consider as the dis- 
tinctive contribution of Tennyson to the thought of the 
century. About the time of the publication of The Prin- 
cess he remarked to Mr. Aubrey de Vere, who had com- 
mented upon his conservatism, ' I believe in progress, and 
I would conserve the hopes of man ; ' and later, when he 
went to live at Farringford, he cut into the tiles of the 
entrance hall this Welsh motto, ' Y Gvvir yn erbyn y byd,' 
' The truth against the world.' Here is the keynote of The 
Princess, and of all his most characteristic work, Mr. 
Arthur Waugh has said, ' While The Princess served, on 
the one hand, as a piece to be staged with all the refine- 
ment of the poet's taste, backed by richly colored and 
harmonious scenery, it carried at its heart the poet's in- 
variable creed.' 

One of the primary articles of this creed, the one written 
in letters of light across this poem, is that the destiny of 
the race is so inextricably involved in the nature and in- 
fluence of woman that reverence for her, whose distinctive 
features are — 

' Mental breadth and childward care,' 

will bring purity, nobility, and strength, and will inspire 
mankind — 



PREFACE. ix 

•To follow Light, and do the Right.' 

Tennyson's ideal of womanhood was taken from that 
source of his own noble manhood, — his mother. 

* Not learned, save in gracious household ways, 
Not perfect, nay, but full of tender wants. 
No Angel, but a dearer being, all dipt 
In Angel instincts, breathing Paradise, 
Interpreter between the Gods and men. 

Happy he 
With such a mother ! faith in womankind 
Beats with his blood, and trust in all things high 
Comes easy to him.' 

His ideal of manhood was from — 

' The first of all the kings who drew 
The knighthood-errant of this realm and all 
The realms together under him, their Head, 
In that fair order of the Table Round. 

^Yho taught his Knights — 
To reverence the King as if he were 
Their conscience, and their conscience as their King, 
To break the heathen and uphold the Christ, 
To ride abroad redressing human wrongs, 
To speak no slander, no, nor listen to it, 
To lead sweet lives in purest chastity. 
To love one maiden only, cleave to her. 
And worship her by years of noWe deeds. 
Until they won her ; for indeed I knew 
Of no more subtle master under heaven 
Than is the maiden passion for a maid. 
Not only to keep down the base in man. 
But teach high thought, and amiable words 
And courtliness, and the desire of fame. 
And love of truth, and all that makes a man.' 



X PREFACE 

How touchingly typical of all that Tennyson was, and of 
all he loved and sung, was that scene at his passing — 

' To where beyond these voices there is peace,' 

when, calling for his beloved poet, he opened Cyinbeli7ie to 
the passage which he prized as ' the tenderest in Shake- 
speare,' where Imogen, the loveliest of Shakespeare's lovely 
women, is restored to her husband : 

' Hang there, like fruit, my soul, 
Till the tree die.' 

Of this act, Hallam Tennyson says, ' It was probably an 
answer to a message that I had given him from my 
mother.' 

In replying to the attacks of the Neiv Tim on, Tennyson 
had said : 

' An artist, sir, should rest in Art, 
And waive a little of his claim; 
-To have the great poetic heart 
Is more than all poetic fame ; ' 

and nothing which he ever wrote better illustrated this 
noble ideal than did The Princess in its origin and history. 
The ' great poetic heart ' beating throughout this poem was 
not recognized by those who thought they possesssed — 

' The critic clearness of an eye 
That saw through all the muses' walk,' 

and who consequently assumed the guardianship of the 
poetical House of Fame ; but there were those who looked 
and listened, and they saw the features and heard the voice 
of a prophet. To one of these. Henry Lushington, he dedi- 
cated the second edition of The Princess. Of him Tenny- 



PREFACE. xi 

son once wrote: 'Of all the critics with whom I have 
discussed my poems, IVIr. Lushington is the most sug- 
gestive.' 

No English poet, except Shakespeare and Wordsworth, 
has called forth such abundant and various critical com- 
mentary as has Tennyson. From the early and prophetic 
utterance of Arthur Hallam, until the latest searching and 
comprehensive works of Mr. E. C. Stedman, Mr. Arthur 
Waugh, and Mr. Stopford Brooke, there is to be found a 
body of judicious and sympathetic criticism which is a 
noble tribute to the fame of Tennyson. He has escaped, 
too, that dreadful phantom which haunted him in life, — 
the indiscreet biographer, the ' fool and knave ' upon whom 
he called down the ' curse of Shakespeare ' lest he — 

' Proclaim the faults he would not show : 
Break lock and seal ; betray the trust : 
Keep nothing sacred,' 

Wordsworth has said that every poet, in proportion as 
he is truly great and original, must educate the audience, 
must create the taste by which he is to be enjoyed and 
judged, that — 

' You must love him ere to you 
He will seem worthy of your love.' 

This principle of criticism has now become fundamental, 
and the purpose of this edition of The Princess is to apply 
it in the study of him to whom Wordsworth bequeathed the 
singing robes ; to bring the reader into vital relations with 
those matchless art-forms and powerful political and social 
principles, which constitute the revelation of Tennyson, the 
man and the poet. 



xii PREFACE. 

Tennyson should be judged by those standards which he 
sets up in the hearts of his readers, and not by those of 
Wordsworth or Browning : consequently the notes will be 
literary ; they will aim to reflect the peculiarities of form 
and content to be found in the poet's early work, and to 
reveal how that ' largess of blossoms ' developed into ' the 
flower of perfect speech ' which gave us the vision of — 

'The immortal enveiled in mortal things.' 

The simphcity, devotion, and beauty of the artist : the 
dignity, strength, and nobility of the man ; the personal 
note so clear, so pure, so complex in its variety of tone and 
color and intellectual conception ; the English atmosphere 
so invigorating in its power to heal and cleanse ; and the 
nineteenth-century idea so rich and attractive in its con- 
tent and range, — these are the things to be found in the 
poetry of Alfred Tennyson. 

" Not of the howling dervishes of song, 

Who craze the brain with their delirious dance, 
Art thou, O sweet historian of the heart ! 
Therefore to thee the laurel leaves belong, 
To thee our love and our allegiance 
For thy allegiance to the poet's art." 

A. J. G. 
Brookline, Mass., September^ 1896. 

My heartiest thanks are due to the accomplished liter- 
ary scholar, Mr. E. Charlton Black, who has done me the 
great kindness of reading the proofs of this volume. 

A. J. G. 

Brookline, Mass., October, 1896. 



INTRODUCTION 



" So vividly and clearly does the poet delineate the crea- 
tures of his fancy that we cannot help viewing them as 
actual existences. We find ourselves sympathizing with 
the Prince, and wishing him success in his arduous suit. 
We feel the rush of breathless expectation in the hot melee 
of the tourney. We wait anxiously the turn of fate beside 
the sick-bed of the wounded lover. It is only when we set 
ourselves to criticising, that we are struck with the imj^roba- 
bility of that which moved us, and become ashamed of our 
former feelings." 

PROFESSOR JAMES HADLEY (1849). 



" Though his stage is an ideal fairyland, yet Tennyson 
has reached the ideal by the only true method, — by bring- 
ing the Middle Age forward to the Present one, and not by 
ignoring the Present to fall back on a cold and galvanized 
Mediaevalism ; and thus he makes his ' Medley ' a mirror 
of the nineteenth century, possessed of its own new art and 
science, its own new temptations and aspirations, and yet 
grounded on, and continually striving to reproduce, the 
forms and experiences of all past time." 

CHARLES KINGSLEY (1850). 
xiii 



xiv INTRODUCTION. 

•• In his Princess Tennyson has, with exquisite taste, dis- 
posed of the question, which has its burlesque and comic, 
as well as its tragic side, of woman's present place and 
future destinies. And if any one wishes to see this subject 
treated \\'\i\\ a masterly and delicate hand, in protest alike 
against the theories which would make her as the man, 
which she could only be by becoming masculine, not manly, 
and those which w^ould have her to remain the toy. or the 
slave, or the slight thing of sentimental and frivolous ac- 
complishment, I would recommend him to study the few 

last pages of The Pri/iccss.'''' 

F. W. ROBERTSON (1S52). 



'•' The Princess is 'earnest wed to sport," — the attempt 
of a mind whose feeling for the beautiful and the true is 
stronger than its humor and fun, to treat certain modern 
mistakes about the true relation of man and woman with 
good-humored satire, and in spite of this intention impelled 
to a strain of serious thought and impassioned feeling. It 
is a laugh subsiding into tenderness and tears. But, be- 
cause the commencement is mock heroic, and the machin- 
ery highly fanciful, the earnest close seems rather the poet's 
own utterance of his views of the relations of the se.xes, 
than the inherent moral of the story." 

GEORGE BRIMLEY (1855). 

" Other works of our poet's are greater, but none is so 
fascinating as this romantic tale : English throughout, yet 
combining the England of Coeur de Leon with that of 
Victoria in one bewitching picture. The Princess has a 
distinct purpose, — the illustration of woman's struggles, 
aspirations, and proper sphere ; and the conclusion is one 



INTRODUCTION. xv 

wherewith the instincts of cultured people are so thoroughly 
in accord, that some are used to answer, when asked to 
present their view of the -woman question,' -you will tind 
it at the close of The Princess.'' "' 

E. C. STEDMAN (1875;. 

" The Princess contains Tennysons solution of the prob- 
lem of the true position of woman in society — a profound 
and vital question upon the solution of which the future of 
civilization depends. . . . The poem breathes throughout 
that faith and hope in the future which make Tennyson 
the poet of a progressive age." 

S. E. DAWSON (1882). 

(Mr. Dawson's Study of The Princess elicited a long and ap- 
preciative letter from the Poet.) 

"'I believe in progress,' said Tennyson to Aubrey de 
Vere, ' and I would conserve the hopes of man.' • This is 
the keynote of The Princess.' Through all emendations 
and additions, chiefly interesting to the bibliographer, the 
spirit and intention of the poem remain unchanged. While 
it served, on the one hand, as a piece to be staged with all 
the refinement of the poefs taste, backed by richly colored 
and harmonious scenery, it carried at its heart the poet's 
invariable creed." 

ARTHUR WAUGH (1892). 

'• The Princess enshrines the woman's question as it ap- 
peared nearly fifty years ago ; and, considering all that has 
been done since then, it is a prophetic utterance. He has 
touched with grace and clearness a number of the phases 
of opinion which now prevail, and which then had only 



xvi INTRODUCTION, 

begun to prevail, embodying each phase in one of his char- 
acters. The woman's question owes a great deal to The 

Princess^ 

STOPFORD BROOKE (1S95). 

" The Princess is a masterpiece. Exquisite as its authors 
verse always is, it w^as never more exquisite than here, 
whether in blank verse or in the (superadded) lyrics ; while 
none of his deliberately arranged plays contains characters 
half so good as those of the Princess herself, of Ladv 
Blanche and Lady Psyche, of Cyril, of the two kings, and 
even of one or two others. 

'• It may or may not be agreed that the question of the 
equahty of the sexes is one of the distinguishing questions 
of this century ; and some of those who would give it that 
position may or may not maintain that it is treated here too 
lightly, while their opponents may wish that it had been 
treated more lightly still. But this very difference will point 
the unbiassed critic to the same conclusion, that Tennyson 
has hit ' the golden mean.' "" 

GEORGE SAINTSBURY (1896). 



COXTENTS. 



PAGE 

Preface v 

Introduction xiii 

Prologue i 

Canto I lo 

Canto II 19 

Canto III 35 

Canto IV 48 

Interlude 68 

Canto V 69 

Canto VI 88 

Canto \'ll 102 

Conclusion 115 

BioGRAPHicAi ". 120 

Notes 122 

Editions of "The J'kincess " . . - 214 

References 215 



TO 

HENRY LUSHINGTON, 

THIS VOLUME IS INSCRIBED BY HIS FRIEND, 



A. TENNYSON. 



Sweet the song, the story sweet, 
There is no man hearkens it. 
No man living 'neath the sun, 
So out wearied, so foredone. 
Sick and woful, worn and sad, 
But is healed, but is glad 
'Tis so sweet." 

Cantefable of AucASSiN and Nicolette. 



THE PRINCESS 

A MEDLEY. 



PROLOGUE. 



Sir Walter Vivla^n all a summer's day 
Gave his broad lawns until the set of sun 
Up to the people : thither flock'd at noon 
His tenants, wife and child, and thither half 
The neighboring borough with their Institute 
Of which he was the patron. I was there 
From college, visiting the son, — the son 
A Walter too, — with others of our set. 
Five others : we were seven at Vivian-place. 

And me that morning Walter show'd the house, lo 
Greek, set with busts : from vases in the hall 
Flowers of all heavens, and lovelier than their names. 
Grew side by side ; and on the pavement lay 
Carved stones of the Abbey-ruin in the park. 
Huge Ammonites, and the first bones of Time ; 
And on the tables every clime and age 
Jumbled together; celts and calumets. 
Claymore and snowshoe, toys in lava fans 
Of sandal, amber, ancient rosaries, 



2 PROLOGUE. 

Laborious orient ivory sphere in sphere, 20 

The cursed Malayan crease, and battle-clubs 
From the isles of palm : and higher on the walls, 
Betwixt the monstrous horns of elk and deer, 
His own forefathers' arms and armor hung. 

And 'this,' he said, 'was Hugh's at Agincourt ; 
And that was old Sir Ralph's at Ascalon : 
A good knight he ! we keep a chronicle 
With ail about him ' — which he brought, and I 
Dived in a hoard of tales that dealt with knights 
Half-legend, half-historic, counts and kings 30 

Who laid about them at their wills and died ; 
And mixt with these, a lady, one that arm'd 
Her own fair head, and sallying thro' the gate, 
Had beat her foes with slaughter from her walls. 

' O miracle of women,' said the book, 
' O noble heart who, being strait-besieged 
By this wild king to force her to his wish, 
^or bent, nor broke, nor shunn'd a soldier's deaths 
I^ut now when all was lost or seem'd as lost — 
Her stature more than mortal in the burst 40 



<«.^^\\Of sunrise, her arm lifted, eyes on hre 



^' /Brake with a blast of trumpets from the gate,^ 
And, falling on them like a thunderbolt. 
She trampled some beneath her horses' heels, 
And some were whelm'd with missiles of the wall, 
And some were push'd with lances from the rock, 
And pa~rt were drown'd within the whirling brook : 
fO miracle of noble womanhood ! '\ 



PROLOGUE. 



So sang the gallant glorious chronicle 



And, I all rapt in this, ' Come out,' he said, 50 

' To the Abbey : there is Aunt Elizabeth 
And sister Lilia with the rest.' We went 
(I kept the book and had my finger in it) 
Down thro' the park : strange was the sight to me ; 
For all the sloping pasture murimir'd, sown 
With happy faces and with holiday. 
There moved the multitude, a thousand heads : 
The patient leaders of their Institute 
Taught them with facts. One rear'd a font of stone 
And drew, from butts of water on the slope, go 

The fountain of the moment, playing now 
A twisted snake, and now a rain of pearls, 
Or steep-up spout whereon the gilded ball 
Danced like a wisp : and somewhat lower down 
A man with knobs and wires and vials fired 
A cannon : Echo answer'd in her sleep 
From hollow fields : and here were telescopes 
For azure views; and there a group of girls 
In circle waited, whom the electric shock 
Dislink'd with shrieks and laughter: round the lake to 
TA little clock-work steamer paddling plied \ 
And shook the lilies : perch'd about the knolls 
A dozen angry models jetted steam : 
A petty railway ran : a fire-balloon 
Rose gem-like up before the dusky groves 
And dropt a fairy parachute and past : 
And there thro' twenty posts of telegraph 
They flash'd a saucy message to and fro 
Between the mimic stations ; so that sport 



4 PROLOGUE. 

Went hand in hand with science ; otherwhere 
Pure sport : a herd of boys with clamor bowl'd 
And stump'd the wicket ; babies roll'd about 
Like tumbled fruit in grass ; and men and maids 
Arranged a country-dance, and flew thro' light 
And shadow, while the twangling violin 
Struck up with Soldier-laddie, and overhead 
(The broad ambrosial aisles of lofty lime \/^'<J 



Made noise with bees and breeze from end to end. \ -V^ 



Strange was the sight and smacking of the time ; 
And long we gazed, but satiated at length 90 

Came to the ruins. High-arch'd and ivy-claspt, 
Of finest Gothic lighter than a fire, 
Thro' one wide chasm of time and frost they gave 
The park, the crowd, the house ; but all within 
The sward was trim as any garden-lawn : 
And here we lit on Aunt Elizabeth, 
And Lilia with the rest, and lady friends 
From neighbor seats : and there was Ralph himself, 
A broken statue propt against the wall. 
As gay as any. Lilia, wild with sport, lOO 

Half child half woman as she was, had wound 
A scarf of orange round the stony helm, 
And robed the shoulders in a rosy silk, 
(That made\the old waritior /from his! ivied nool^ 
plow like a sunbeam : near his tomb a feast/ 
6hone, silver-set ; about it lay the guests, I 
And there we join'd them : then the maiden Aunt 
Took this fair day for text, and from it preach'd 
An universal culture for the crowd, 



PROLOGUE. 5 

And all things great ; but we, unworthier, told no 

Of college : he had climb'd across the spikes, 
And he had squeezed himself betwixt the bars. 
And he had breath'd the Proctor's dogs ; and one 
Discuss'd his tutor, rough to common men, 
But honeying at the whisper of a lord ; 
And one the Master, as a rogue in grain 
Veneer'd with sanctimonious theory. 

But while they talk'd, above their heads I saw 
The feudal warrior lady-clad ; which brought 
My book to mind : and opening this I read 120 

Of old Sir Ralph a page or two that rang 
With tilt and tourney ; then the tale of her 
That drove her foes with slaughter from her walls, 
And much I praised her nobleness, and 'Where ' 
Ask'd Walter, patting Lilia's head (she lay 
Beside him) ' lives there such a woman now ? ' 

Quick answer'd Lilia, 'There are thousands now 
Such women, but convention beats them down: 
It is but bringing up ; no more than that : 
You men have done it : how 1 hate you all ! uo 

Ah, were I something great ! I wish I were 
Some mighty poetess, I would shame you then. 
That love to keep us children ! O I wish 
That I were some great princess, I would build 
Far off from men a college like a man's. 
And I would teach them all that men are taught : 
We are twice as quick ! ' And here she shook aside 
I'he hand that play'd the patron with her curls. 



6 PROLOGUE. 

And one said smiling, ' Pretty were the sight / > 

If our old halls could change their sex, and flaunt ucr 
[With prudes for proctors, dowagers for deans\ w o^ 
VAnd sweet girl-graduates in their golden hair, j ^*^ 
I think they should not wear our rusty gowns, 
But move as rich as Emperor-moths, or Ralph 
Who shines so in the corner ; yet I fear, 
If there were many Lilia's in the brood. 
However deep you might embower the nest, 
vSome boy would spy it.' 

At this upon the sward 
She tapt her tinylsilken-sandal'dyfoot : 
' That's your light way ; but I would make it death iso 
For any male thing but to peep at us.' 

Petulant she spoke, and at herself she laugh'd ; 
A rosebud set with little wilful thorns, 
And sweet as English air could make her, she : 
But Walter hail'd a score of names upon her, 
And 'petty Ogress,' and 'ungrateful Puss,' 
And swore he long'd at college, only long'd, 
All else was well, for she-society. 
They boated and they cricketed ; they talk'd 
At wine, in clubs, of art, of politics ; 160 

They lost their weeks ; they vext the souls of deans ; 
They rode ; they betted ; made a hundred friends. 
And caught the blossom of the flying terms, 
But miss'd the mignonette of Vivian-place, 
The little hearth-flower Lilia. Thus he spoke, 
Part banter, part affection. 

' True,' she said, 



PROLOGUE 7 

'We doubt not that. O yes, you miss'cl us much. 
I'll stake my ruby ring upon it you did.' 

She held it out ; and as a parrot turns 
Up thro' gilt wires a crafty loving eye, no 

And takes a lady's finger with all care, 
And bites it for true heart and not for harm, 
So he with Lilia's. Daintily she shriek'd 
And wrung it. ' Doubt my word again ! ' he said. 
' Come, listen ! here is proof that you were miss'd : 
We seven stay'd at Christmas up to read ; 
And there we took one tutor as to read : 
The hard-grain'd Muses of the cube and square 
Were out of season : never man, I think, 
So moulder'd in a sinecure as he : iso 

For while our cloisters echo'd frosty feet, 
And our long walks were stript as bare as brooms, 
We did but talk you over, pledge you all 
In wassail ; often, like as many girls — 
Sick for the hollies and the yews of home — 
As many little trifling Lilias — play'd 
Charades and riddles as at Christmas here, 
And whaVs my thought and 7cihen and where and how, 
And often told a tale from mouth to mouth 
As here at Christmas.' 

She remember'd that : i90 

A pleasant game, she thought : she liked it more 
Than magic music, forfeits, all the rest. 
But these — what kind of tales did men tell men, 
She wonder'd, by themselves? 

A half-disdain 



8 PROLOGUE. 

Perch'd on the pouted blossom of her lips : 

And Walter nodded at me ; ' He began, 

The rest would follow, each in turn ; and so 

We forged a sevenfold story. Kind 'i what kind ? 

Chimeras, crotchets, Christmas solecisms, 

Seven-headed monsters only made to kill 200 

Time by the fire in winter.' 

' Kill him now, 
The tyrant ! kill him in the summer too,' 
Said Lilia ; ' Why not now ,'' ' the maiden Aunt. 
' Why not a summer's as a winter's tale ? 
A tale for summer as befits the time, 
And something it should be to suit the place, 
Heroic, for a hero lies beneath. 
Grave, solemn ! ' 

Walter warp'd his mouth at this 
To something so mock-solemn, that I laugh'd 
And Lilia woke with sudden-shrilling mirth 210 

An echo like a ghostly woodpecker. 
Hid in the ruins ; till the maiden Aunt 
(A little sense of wrong had touch'd her face 
With color) turn'd to me with ' As you will ; 
Heroic if you will, or what you will, 
Or be yourself your hero if you will' 

' Take Lilia, then, for heroine,' clamor'd he, 
' And make her some great Princess, six feet high, 
Grand, epic, homicidal ; and be you 
The Prince to win her ! ' 

'Then follow me, the Prince,' 220 
I answer'd, ' each be hero in his turn ! 



PROLOGUE. 

Seven and yet one, like shadows in a dream. — 

Heroic seems our Princess as required — 

But something made to suit with Time and place, 

A Gothic ruin and a Grecian house, 

A talk of college and of ladies' rights, 

A feudal knight in silken masquerade. 

And. yonder, shrieks and strange experiments 

For which the good Sir Ralph had burnt them all 

This 7uerc a medley ! we should have him back 

Who told the " Winter's tale " to do it for us. 

No matter : we will say whatever comes. 

And let the ladies sing us, if they will, 

From time to time, some ballad or a song 

To give us breathing-space.' 

So I began. 
And the rest follow'd : and the women sang 
Between the rougher voices of the men, 
Like linnets in the pauses of the wind : 
And here I give the story and the songs. 



THE PRINCESS: 



A Prince I was, blue-eyed, and fair in face, 
Of temper amorous, as the first of May, 
With lengths of yellow ringlets, like a girl, 
For on my cradle shone the Northern star. 

There lived an ancient legend in our house. 
Some sorcerer, whom a far-off grandsire burnt 
Because he cast no shadow, had foretold. 
Dying, that none of all our blood should know 
The shadow from the substance, and that one 
Should come to fight with shadows and to fall. lo 

For so, my mother said, the story ran. 
And, truly, waking dreams were, more or less. 
An old and strange affection of the house. 
Myself too had weird seizures. Heavens knows what : 
On a sudden in the midst of men and day. 
And while I walk'd and talk'd as heretofore, 
I seem'd to move among a world of ghosts. 
And feel myself the shadow of a dream. 
Our great court-Galen poised his gilt-head cane, 
And paw'd his beard, and mutter'd ' catalepsy.' 20 

My mother pitying made a thousand prayers ; 
My mother was as mild as any saint. 
Half-canonized by all that look'd on her, 
So gracious was her tact and tenderness : 
But my good father thought a king a king ; 
He cared not for the affection of the house ; 



l] a medley. II 

He held his sceptre Uke a pedant's wand 
To lash offence, and with long arms and hands 
Reach'd out, and pick'd offenders from the mass 
For judgment. 

Now it chanced that I had been, so 
While life was yet in bud and blade, betroth'd 
To one, a neighboring Princess : she to me 
Was proxy-wedded with a bootless calf 
At eight years old ; and still from time to time 
Came murmurs of her beauty from the South, 
And of her brethren, youths of puissance ; 
And still I wore her picture by my heart. 
And one dark tress ; and all around them both 
Sweet thoughts would swarm as bees about their 
queen. 

But when the days drew nigh that I should wed, 40 
My father sent ambassadors with furs 
And jewels, gifts, to fetch her : these brought back 
A present, a great labor of the loom ; 
And therewithal an answer vague as wind : 
Besides, they saw the king ; he took the gifts ; 
He said there was a compact ; that was true : 
But then she had a will ; was he to blame ? 
And maiden fancies ; loved to live alone 
Among her women ; certain, would not wed. 

That morning in the presence-room I stood so 

With Cyril and with Florian, my two friends : 
The first, a gentleman of broken means 
(His father's fault) but given to starts and bursts 



12 THE PRINCESS: [l. 

Of revel ; and the last, my other heart, 
And ahnost my half-self, for still we moved 
Together, twinn'd as horse's ear and eye. 

Now, w^hile they spake, I saw my father's face 
Grow long and troubled like a rising moon. 
Inflamed with wrath : he started on his feet, 
Tore the king's letter, snow'd it down, and rent 60 

The wonder of the loom thro' warp and woof 
From skirt to skirt ; and at the last he sware 
That he would send a hundred thousand men. 
And bring her in a whirlwind : then he chew'd 
The thrice-turn'd cud of wrath, and cook'd his spleen, 
Communing with his captains of the war. 

At last I spoke. ' My father, let me go. 
It cannot be but some gross error lies 
In this report, this answer of a king, 
Whom all men rate as kind and hospitable : 70 

Or, maybe, I myself, my bride once seen, 
Whate'er my grief to find her less than fame, 
May rue the bargain made.' And Florian said : 
' I have a sister at the foreign court. 
Who moves about the Princess ; she, you know, 
Who wedded with a nobleman from thence : 
He, dying lately, left her, as I hear. 
The lady of three castles in that land : 
Thro' her this matter might be sifted clean.' 
And Cyril whisper'd : ' Take me with you too.' so 

Then laughing, ' What, if these weird seizures come 
Upon you in those lands, and no one near 



( 



1.] A MEDLEY. 13 

To point you out the shadow from the truth ! 

Take me : Til serve you better in a strait; 

I grate on rusty hinges here : ' but ' No ! ' 

Roar'd the rough king, ' you shall not ; we ourself 

Will crush her pretty maiden fancies dead 

In iron gauntlets : break the council up.' 



But when the council broke, I rose and past 
Thro' the wild woods that hung about the town ; 9 
Found a still place, and pluck'd her likeness out, 
Laid it on flowers, and watch'd it lying bathed 
In the green gleam of dewy-tassell'd trees : ^ 
What were those fancies ? wherefore break her troth ? 
Proud look'd the lips : but while I meditated 
A wind arose and rush'd upon the South, ■^, ^ 

And shook the songs, the whispers, and the shriek? ^ 
Of the wild woods together ; and a Voice 
Went with it, ' Follow, follow, thou shalt win.' 



Then, ere the silver sickle of that month 100 

Became her golden shield, I stole from court 
With Cyril and with Florian, unperceived, 
Cat-footed thro' the town, and half in dread 
To hear my father's clamor at our backs. 
With Ho ! from some bay-window shake the night ; 
But all was quiet : from the bastion'd walls 
Like threaded spiders, one by one, we dropt, 
And flying reach'd the frontier : then we crost 
To a livelier land ; and so by tilth and grange, 
; And vines, and blowing bosks of wilderness, \ no 



14 THE PRINCESS: [i. 

We gain'd the mother-city thick with towers, 
And in the imperial palace found the king. 

His name was Gama ; crack'd and small his voice, 
But bland the smile that like a wrinkling wind 
On glassy water drove his cheek in lines ; 
A little dry old man, without a star, 
Not like a king : three days he feasted us, 
And on the fourth I spake of why we came, 
And my betroth'd. ' You do us, Prince,' he said, 
Airing a snowy hand and signet-gem, I2(i 

' All honor. We remember love ourselves 
In our sweet youth : there did a compact pass 
Long summers back, a kind of ceremony — 
I think the year in which our olives fail'd. 
I would you had her. Prince, with all my heart, 
With my full heart : but there were widows here, 
Two widows, Lady Psyche, Lady Blanche ; 
They fed her theories, in and out of place 
Maintaining that with equal husbandry 
The woman were an equal to the man. i3o 

They harp'd on this ; with this our banquets rang ; 
Our dances broke and buzz'd in knots of talk ; 
Nothing but this ; my very ears were hot 
To hear them : knowledge, so my daughter held, 
Was all in all : they had but been, sh- thought, 
As children ; they must lose the child, assume 
The woman : then. Sir, awful odes she wrote, 
Too awful, sure, for what they treated of. 
But all she is and does is awful ; odes 
About this losing of the child ; and rhymes 140 



I.] A MEDLEY. 15 

And dismal lyrics, prophesying change 

Beyond all reason : these the women sang ; 

And they that know such things — I sought but peace ; 

No critic I — would call them masterpieces : 

They master'd me. At last she begg'd a boon, — 

A certain summer-palace which I have 

Hard by your father's frontier : I said no. 

Yet being an easy man, gave it : and there, 

All wild to found an University 

For maidens, on the spur she fled ; and more 150 

We know not, — only this : they see no men, 

Not ev'n her brother Arac, nor the twins 

Her brethren, tho' they love her, look upon her 

As on a kind of paragon ; and I 

(Pardon me saying it) were much loath to breed 

Dispute betwixt myself and mine : but since 

(And I confess with right) you think me bound 

In some sort, I can give you letters to her ; 

And yet, to speak the truth, I rate your chance 

Almost at naked nothing.' 

Thus the king ; 16O 

And I, tho' nettled that he seem'd to slur 
With garrulous ease and oily courtesies 
Our formal compact, yet, not less (all frets 
But chafing me on fire to find my bride) 
Went forth again with both my friends. We rode 
Many a long league back to the North. At last 
From hills, that look'd across a land of hope, 
We dropt with evening on a rustic town 
Set in a gleaming river's crescent-curve, \ 
Close at the boundary of the liberties ; 170 



i6 THE PRINCESS: [l. 

There, enter'd an old hostel, call'd mine host 
To council, plied him with his richest wines, 
And show'd the late-writ letters of the king. 

He with a long low sibilation, stared 
As blank as death in marble ; then exclaim'd, 
Averring it was clear against all rules 
For any man to go : but as his brain 
Began to mellow, ' If the king,' he said, 
' Had given us letters, was he bound to speak ? 
The king would bear him out ; ' and at the last — i80 
The summer of the vine in all his veins — 
' No doubt that we might make it worth his while. 
She once had past that way ; he heard her speak ; 
She scared him ; life ! he never saw the like ; 
She look'd as grand as doomsday and as grave : 
And he, he reverenced his liege-lady there ; 
He always made a point to post wdth mares ; 
His daughter and his housemaid were the boys : 
The land, he understood, for miles about 
Was till'd by women ; all the swine were sows, 190 

And all the dogs ' — 

But while he jested thus, 
A thought flash'd thro' me which I clothed in act, 
Remembering how we three presented Maid, 
Or Nymph, or Goddess, at high tide of feast, 
In masque or pageant at my father's court. 
We sent mine host to purchase female gear ; 
He brought it, and himself, a sight to shake 
The midriff of despair with laughter, holp 
To lace us up, till, each, in maiden plumes 



I.] A MEDLEY. 17 

We rustled : him we gave a costly bribe 200 

To guerdon silence, mounted our good steeds, 
And boldly ventured on the liberties. 

We follow'd up the river as we rode. 
And rode till midnight, when the college-lights 
Began to glitter firetiy-like in copse 
And linden alley : then we past an arch, 
Whereon a woman-statue rose with wings 
From four wing'd horses dark against the stars ; 
And some inscription ran along the front, 
But deep in shadow : further on we gain'd 210 

A little street, half garden and half house ; 
But scarce could hear each other speak for noise 
Of clocks and chimes, like silver hammers falling 
On silver anvils, and the splash and stir 
Of fountains spouted up and showering down 
In meshes of the jasmine and the rose : 
And all about us peaFd the nightingale. 
Rapt in her song, and careless of the snare. 

There stood a bust of Pallas for a sign, 
By two sphere lamps blazon'd like Heaven and Earth 
With constellation and with continent, 221 

Above an entry : riding in, we call'd ; 
A plump-arm 'd Ostleress and a stable-wench 
Came running at the call, and help'd us down. 
Then stept a buxom hostess forth, and sail'd. 
Full-blown, before us into rooms which gave 
[upon a pillar'd porch, the bases lost\ 
In laurel : her we ask'd of that and this. 



i8 THE PRINCESS: [i. 

And who were tutors. ' Lady Blanche,' she said, 

' And Lady Psyche.' 'Which was the prettiest, 2.30 

Best-natured ? ' ' Lady Psyche.' ' Hers are we,' 

One voice, we cried; and I sat down and wrote, 

In such a hand as when a field of corn 

Bows all its ears before the roaring East ; 

' Three ladies of the Northern empire pray 
Your Highness would enroll them with your own. 
As Lady Psyche's pupils.' 

This I sealVl : 
The seal was Cupid bent above a scroll, 
And o'er his head Uranian Venus hung, 
/And raised the blinding bandage from his eyes :\ 240 
I gave the letter to be sent with dawn ; 
And then to bed, where half in doze I seem'd 
To float about a o^limmerino^ nisrht, and watch 
A full sea glazed withNmuffled moonlight, \swell 
On some dark shore just seen that it was rich. 



II.] A MEDLEY. 19 



11. 



As thro' the land at eve we went 

And pluck'd the ripen'd ears, 
We fell out, my wife and I, 
O we fell out I know not why, 

And kiss'd again with tears. 
And blessings on the falling out 

That all the more endears, 
\Yhen we fall out with those we love 

And kiss again with tears I 
For when we came where lies the child 

We lost in other years, 
There above the little grave, 
O there above the little grave, 

We kiss'd again with tears. 

At break of day the College Portress came ; 

She brought us Academic silks, in hue 

The lilac, with a silken hood to each. 

And zoned with gold ; and now when these were on, 

And we as rich as moths from dusk cocoons. 

She, curtseying her obeisance, let us know 

The Princess Ida waited : otit we paced, 

I first, and following thro' the porch that sang 

All round with laurel, issued in a court 

Compact with lucid marbles, boss'd with lengths 

Of classic frieze, with! ample awningsVay 

Betwixt the pillars, ana with great urns of flowers. 

The Muses and the Graces, group'd in threes, 

Enring'd a billowing fountain in the midst ; 



20 THE PRINCESS: [ii. 

And here and there on lattice edges lay 
Or book or lute ; but hastily we past, 
And up a flight of stairs into the hall. 

There at a board by tome and paper sat, 
With two tame leopards couch'd beside her throne, 
All beauty compass'd in a female form, 20 

The Princess ; liker to the inhabitant 
Of some clear planet close upon the Sun, 
Than our man's earth ; such eyes were in her head. 
And so much grace and power, breathing down 
From over her arch'd brows, with every turn 
Lived thro' her to the tips of her long hands. 
And to her feet. She rose her height, and said : 

' We give you welcome — not without redound 
Of use and glory to yourselves ye come, 
The first-fruits of the stranger : aftertime, 30 

And that full voice which circles round the grave. 
Will rank you nobly, mingled up with me. 
What ! are the ladies of your land so tall } ' 
'We of the court,' said Cyril. ' From the court,' 
She ansvv^er'd, ' then ye know the Prince .'' ' and he : 
' The climax of his age ! as tho' there were 
One rose in all the world, your Highness that, 
He worships your ideal : ' she replied : 
' We scarcely thought in our own hall to Iiear 
This barren verbiage, current among men, 40 

Light coin, the tinsel clink of compliment. 
Your flight from out your bookless wilds would seem 
As arguing love of knowledge and of power ; 



II.] A MEDLEY. 21 

Your language proves you still the child. Indeed, 

We dream not of him : when we set our hand 

To this great work, we purposed with ourself 

Never to wed. You likewise will do well. 

Ladies, in entering here, to cast and fling 

The tricks, which make us toys of men, that so, 

Some future time, if so indeed you will, 50 

You may with those self-styled our lords ally 

Your fortunes, justlier balanced, scale with scale.' 

At those high words, we conscious of ourselves. 
Perused the matting ; then an officer 
Rose up, and read the statutes, such as these : 
Not for three years to correspond with home ; 
Not for three years to cross the liberties ; 
Not for three years to speak with any men ; 
And many more, which hastily subscribed, 



A' 



We enter'd on the boards : and ' Now,' she cried, go <' '•' 
' Ye are green wood, see ye warp not. Look, our hallX ^*^ 



ur statues ! — not of those that men desire, 
Sleek Odalisques, or oracles of mode. 
Nor stunted squaws of West or East ; but she 
That taught the Sabine how to rule, and she 
The foundress of the Babylonian wall. 
The Carian Artemisia strong in war. 
The Rhodope, that built the pyramid, 
Clelia, Cornelia, with the Palmyrene 
That fought Aurelian, and the Roman brows 70 

Of Agrippina. Dwell with these, and lose 
Convention, since to look on noble forms 
Makes noble thro' the sensuous organism 



22 THE PRINCESS: [ii. 

That which is higher. O lift your natures up : 

Embrace our aims : work out your freedom. Girls, 

Knowledge is now no more a fountain seal'd : 

Drink deep, until the habits of the slave. 

The sins of emptiness, gossip and spite 

And slander, die. Better not be at all 

Than not be noble. Leave us : you may go : so 

To-day the Lady Psyche will harangue 

The fresh arrivals of the week before ; 

For they press in from all the provinces, 

And fill the hive.' 

She spoke, and bowing waved 
Dismissal : back again we crost the court 
To Lady Psyche's : as we enter'd in. 
There sat along the forms, like morning doves 
That sun their milky bosoms on the thatch, 
A patient range of pupils ; she herself 
Erect behind a desk of satin-wood, 90 

A quick brunette, well-moulded, falcon-eyed. 
And on the hither side, or so she look'd, 
Of twenty summers. At her left, a child, 
In shining draperies, headed like a star. 
Her maiden babe, a double April old, 
Aglai'a slept. We sat : the Lady glanced : 
Then Florian, but no livelier than the dame 
That whisper 'd ' Asses' ears ' among the sedge, 
' My sister.' ' Comely too by all that's fair,' 
Said Cyril. 'O hush, hush ! ' and she began. 100 

'This world was once a fluid haze of light, 
Till toward the centre set the starry tides, 



11.] A MEDLEY. 23 

And eddied into suns, that wheeling cast 

The planets : then the monster, then the man : 

Tattoo 'd or woaded, winter-clad in skins, 

Raw from the prime, and crushing down his mate ; 

As yet we find in barbarous isles, and here 

Among the lowest." 

Thereupon she took 
A bird's-eye view of all the ungracious past ; 
Glanced at the legendary Amazon iiu 

As emblematic of a nobler age : 
Appraised the Lycian custom, spoke of those 
That lay at wine with Lar and Lucumo ; 
Ran down the Persian, Grecian, Roman lines 
Of empire, and the woman's state in each. 
How far from just ; till warming with her theme 
She fulmined out her scorn of laws Salique { 

f And little-footed China, touch'd on Mahomet\ ^9 '- 
with much contempt, and came to chivalry : 
When some respect, however slight, was paid i_>o 

To woman, superstition all awry : 
However then commenced the dawn : a beam 
Had slanted forward, falling in a land 
Of promise ; fruit w^ould follow. Deep, indeed. 
Their debt of thanks to her who first had dared 
To leap the rotten pales of prejudice, \ 
Disyoke their necks from custom, and assert 
None lordlier than themselves but that which made 
Woman and man. She had founded ; they must build. 
Here might they learn whatever men were taught : 130 
Let them not fear : some said their heads were less : 
Some men's were small ; not they the least of men ; 



24 THE PRINCESS: [ii. 

For often fineness compensated size : 
Besides, the brain was like the hand, and grew 
With using ; thence the man's, if more was more ; 
He took advantage of his strength to be 
First in the field : some ages had been lost ; 
But woman ripen 'd earlier, and her life 
Was longer ; and albeit their glorious names 
Were fewer, scatter'd stars, yet since in truth i40 

The highest is the measure of the man, 
And not the Kaffir, Hottentot, Malay, 
Nor those horn-handed breakers of the glebe, 
But Homer, Plato, Verulam ; even so 
With woman : and in arts of government 
Elizabeth and others ; arts of war 
The peasant Joan and others ; arts of grace 
Sappho and others vied with any man : 
And, last not least, she who had left her place,. 
And bow'd her state to them, that they might grow 150 
To use and power on this Oasis, lapt 
In the arms of leisure, sacred from the blight 
;0f ancient influence and scorn. 

At last 
She rose upon a wind of prophecy. 
Dilating on the future ; ' everywhere 
Two heads in council, two beside the hearth, 
Two in the tangled business of the world, 
Two in the liberal offices of life. 
Two plummets dropt for one to sound the abyss 
Of science, and the secrets of the mind : ico 

Musician, painter, sculptor, critic, more : 
And everywhere the broad and bounteous Karth 



ir.] A MEDLEY. 25 

Should bear a double growth of those rare souls, 
Poets, whose thoughts enrich the blood of the world.' 

She ended here, and beckon'd us : the rest 
Parted ; and, glowing full-faced welcome, she 
Began to address us, and was moving on 
In gratulation, till as when a boat 
Tacks, and the slacken'd sail flaps, all her voice 
Faltering and fluttering in her throat, she cried, 170 

' A'ly brother ! ' ' Well, my sister.' ' Oh,' she said, 
' What do you here ? and in this dress ? and these ? 
Why who are these ? a wolf within the fold ! 
A pack of wolves ! the Lord be gracious to me ! 
A plot, a plot, a plot, to ruin all ! ' 
' No plot, no plot,' he answer 'd. ' Wretched boy 
How saw you not the inscription on the gate, 
Let no man enter in on pain of death ? ' 
' And if I had,' he answer'd, ' who could think 
The softer Adams of your Academe, I80 

O sister. Sirens tho' they be, were such 
As chanted on the blanching bones of men ? ' 
' But you will find it otherwise,' she said. 
' You jest : ill jesting with edge-tools ! my vow 
Binds me to speak, and O that iron will, 
That axelike edge unturnable, our Head, 
The Princess.' ' Well then, Psyche, take my life, 
And nail me like a weasel on a grange 
For warning : bury me beside the gate, 
And cut this epitaph above my bones ; 190 

Here lies a brother by a sister slaiii^ 
All for the common good of wo7naiikind' 



26 THE PRINCESS: [ii. 

' Let me die too,' said Cyril, ' having seen 
And heard the Lady Psyche.' 

I struck in : 
' Albeit so mask'd, Madam, I love the truth ; 
Receive it ; and in me behold the Prince 
Your countryman, affianced years ago 
To the Lady Ida : here, for here she was, 
And thus (what other way was left ?) I came.' 
' O Sir, O Prince, I have no country ; none ; -joo 

If any, this ; but none. Whate'er I was, 
Disrooted, what I am is grafted here. 
Affianced, Sir? love-whispers may not breathe 
Within this vestal limit; and how should J. 
Who am not mine, say, live : the thunderbolt 
Hangs silent ; but prepare : I speak ; it falls.' 
' Vet pause,' I said : ' for that inscription there 
I think no more of deadly lurks therein. 
Than in a clapper clapping in a garth. 
To scare the fowl from fruit : if more there be, 210 

If more and acted on, what follows? war ; 
Your own work marr'd : for this your Academe, 
Whichever side be victor, in the halloo 
Will topple to the trumpet down, and pass 
With all fair theories only made to gild 
A stormless summer.' ' Let the Princess judge 
Of that,' she said : ' farewell Sir — and to you 
I shudder at the sequel, but I go. ' 



' Are you that Lady Psyche,' I rejoin 'd, 
' The fifth in line from that old Florian, 



II.] A MEDLEY. 27 

Yet hangs his portrait in my father's hall 

(The gaunt old Baron with his beetle brow 

Sun-shaded in the heat of dusty fights) 

As he bestrode my Grandsire, when he fell, 

And all else fled? We point to it, and we say, 

The loyal warmth of Florian is not cold, 

But branches current yet in kindred veins.' 

'Are you that Pysche,' Florian added, ' she 

With whom I sang about the morning hills, / 

Flung ball, flew kite, and raced the purple fly,\ ^ 230 

And snared the squirrel of the glen ? are you 

That Psyche, wont to bind my throbbing brow. 

To smooth my pillow, mix the foaming draught 

Of fever, tell me pleasant tales, and read 

My sickness down to happy dreams ? are you 

That brother-sister Psyche, both in one ? 

' You were that Psyche, but w^hat are you now .'' ' 

' You are that Psyche,' Cyril said, ' for w^hom 

I would be that forever which I seem, — 

Woman, — if I might sit beside your feet, 240 

And glean your scatter'd sapience.' 

Then once more, 
' Are you that Lady Psyche,' I began, 
' That on her bridal morn, before she past 
From all her old companions, when the king 
Kiss'd her pale cheek, declared that ancient ties 
Would still be dear beyond the southern hills ; 
That w'ere there any of our people there 
In w^ant or peril, there was one to hear 
And help them : look ! for such are these and I.' 
'Are you that Psyche,' Florian ask'd, ' to whom, 250 



28 THE PRINCESS: [il. 

In gentler days, your arrow-wounded fawn 
Came flying while you sat beside the well ? 
The creature laid his muzzle on your lap, 
And sobb'd, and you sobb'd with it, and the blood 
Was sprinkled on your kirtle, and you wept. 
That was fawn's blood, not brother's, yet you wept. 
O by the bright head of my little niece, 
You were that Psyche, and what are you now ? ' 
VYou are that Psyche,' Cyril said again, 
.'The mother of the sweetest little maid, 260 

That ever crow'd for kisses.' 

' Out upon it ! ' 
She answer'd, ' Peace ! and why should I not play 
The Spartan Mother with emotion, be 
The Lucius Junius Brutus of my kind ? 
Him you call great : he for the common weal, 
The fading politics of mortal Rome, 
As I might slay this child, if good need were, 
Slew both his sons : and I, shall I, on whom 
The secular emancipation turns 

Of half this world, be swerved from right to save 270 
A prince, a brother ? a little will I yield. 
Best so, perchance, for us, and well for you. 
O hard, when love and duty clash ! I fear 
My conscience will not count me fleckless ; yet — 
Hear my conditions : promise (otherwise 
You perish) as you came, to slip away. 
To-day, to-morrow, soon : it shall be said, 
These women were too barbarous, would not learn ; 
They fled, who might have shamed us : promise, all.' 



II.] A MEDLEY. 29 

What could we else, we promised each ; and she, 28O 
Like some wild creature newly-caged, commenced 
A to and fro, so pacing till she paused 
By Florian ; holding out her lily arms 
Took both his hands, and smiling, faintly said : 
' I knew you at the first : tho' you have grown 
You scarce have alter'd : I am sad and glad 
To see you, Florian. /give thee to death, 
My brother ! it was duty spoke, not L 
My needful seeming harshness, pardon it. 
Our mother, is she well ? ' 

With that she kiss"d 290 
His forehead, then, a moment after, clung 
About him, and betwixt them blossom'd up 
From out a common vein of memory 
Sweet household talk, and phrases of the hearth, 
And far allusion, till the gracious dews 
Began to glisten and to fall : and while 
They stood, so rapt, we gazing, came a voice, 
' I brought a message here from Lady Blanche,' 
Back started she, and turning round we saw 
The Lady Blanche's daughter where she stood, — soo 
Melissa, with her hand upon the lock, — 
A rosy blonde, and in a college-gown. 
That clad her like an April daffodilly 
(Her mother's color) with her lips apart, 
And all her thoughts as fair within her eyes, 
As bottom agates seen to wave and float 
In crystal currents of clear morning seas. 



30 THE PRINCESS: [ii. 

So stood that same fair creature at the door. 
Then Lady Psyche, ' Ah — MeUssa — you ! 
You heard us ? ' and Melissa, ' O pardon me ! 310 

I heard, I could not help it, did not wish : 
But, dearest Lady, pray you fear me not, 
Nor think I bear that heart within my breast. 
To give three gallant gentlemen to death.' 
'I trust you,' said the other, 'for we two 
Were always friends, none closer, elm and vine : 
But yet your mother's jealous temperament — 
Let not your prudence, dearest, drowse, or prove 
The Danaid of a leaky vase/for fear 
This whole foundation ruin, and I lose 320 

My honor, these their lives.' ' Ah, fear me not,' 
Replied Melissa, 'no — I would not tell, \jj 

No, not for all Aspasia's cleverness, t^ J^ 

CNo, not to answer. Madam, all those hard thingsVV^V^^ 

That Sheba came to ask of Solomon.' / 

' Be it so,' the other, ' that we still may lead 

The new light up, and culminate in peace, 

For Solomon may come to Sheba yet.' 

Said Cyril, ' Madam, he the wisest man 

Feasted the woman wisest then, in halls 330 

Of Lebanonian cedar : nor should you 

(Tho' Madam j)Y7// should answer, 7c>e would ask) 

Less welcome find among us, if you came 

Among us, debtors for our lives to you. 

Myself for something more.' He said not what. 

But 'Thanks,' she answered, 'go : we have been too 

long 
Together : keep your hoods about the face ; 



II.] A MEDLEY. 31 

They do so that affect abstraction here. 

Speak Httle ; mix not with the rest ; and hold 

Your promise : all, I trust, may yet be well' 340 

We turn'd to go, but Cyril took the child. 
And held her round the knees against his waist. 
And blew the swoll'n cheek of a trumpeter. 
While Psyche watch'd them, smiling, and the child 
Push'd her flat hand against his face and laugh 'd ; 
And thus our conference closed. 

And then we stroll'd 
For half the day thro' stately theatres 
Bench'd crescent-wise. In each we sat, we heard 
The grave Professor. On the lecture-slate 
The circle rounded under female hands 350 

With flawless demonstration : foUow'd then 
A classic lecture, rich in sentiment, 
With scraps of thundrous Epic lilted out 
By violet-hooded Doctors, elegies 
And quoted odes, and jewels five words long. 
That on the stretch'd forefinger of all Time 
Sparkle forever: then we dipt in all 
That treats of whatsoever is, the state. 
The total chronicles of man, the mind. 
The morals, something of the frame, the rock, 360 

The star, the bird, the fish, the shell, the flower. 
Electric, chemic laws, and all the rest, 
And whatsoever can be taught and known ; 
Till like three horses that have broken fence, 
And glutted all night long breast-deep in corn. 
We issued gorged with knowledge, and I spoke : 



32 THE PRINCESS: [ll. 

' Wh}^, Sirs, they do all this as well as we.' 

' They hunt old trails," said Cyril, ' very well ; 

But when did woman ever yet invent ? " 

' Ungracious ! ' answer'd Florian, 'have you learnt 370 

No more from Psyche's lecture, you that talk'd 

The trash that made me sick, and almost sad ? ' 

' O trash,' he said, ' but with a kernel in it. 

Should I not call her wise, who made me wise ? 

And learnt? I learnt more from her in a flash, 

Than if my brainpan were an empty hull. 

And every Muse tumbled a science in. 

A thousand hearts lie fallow in these halls, 

And round these halls a thousand baby-loves 

Fly twanging headless arrows at the hearts, 380 

Whence follows many a vacant pang ; but O 

With me, Sir, enter'd in the bigger boy. 

The Head of all the golden-shafted firm, 

Th^Iong-limb'd lad that had a Psyche too ; 

He cleft me thro' the stomacher ; and now 

What think you of it, Florian ? do I chase 

The substance or the shadow ? will it hold ? 

I have no sorcerer's malison on me. 

No ghostly hauntings like his Highness. I 

Flatter myself that always everywhere 390 

I know the substance when I see it. Well, • 

Are castles shadows .'' Three of them ? Is she, 

The sweet proprietress, a shadow ? If not, 

Shall those three castles patch my tatter'd coat ? 

For dear are those three castles to my wants. 

And dear is sister Psyche to my heart. 

And two dear things are one of double worth, 



ir.] A MEDLEY. ^3 

And much I might have said, but that my zone 
Unmann'd me : then the Doctors ! O to hear 
The Doctors ! O to watch the thirsty plants 400 

>Imbibing ! once or twice I thought to roar, 
( To break my chain, to shake my mane :> but thou, 
xModulate me, Soul of mincing mimicry ! 
Make liquid treble of that bassoon, my throat ; 
Abase those eyes that ever loved to meet 
Star-sisters answering under crescent brows; 
Abate the stride, which speaks of man, and loose 
A flying charm of blushes o'er this cheek, 
Where they like swallows coming out of time 
Will wonder why they came : but hark the bell -tio 
For dinner, let us go I ' 

And in we stream "d 
Among the columns, pacing staid and still 
By twos and threes, till all from end to end 
With beauties every shade of brown and fair 
In colors gayer than the morning mist, 
The long hall glitter'd like a bed of flowers. 
How might a man not wander from his wits 
Pierced thro' with eyes, but that I kept mine own 
Intent on her, who rapt in glorious dreams, 
The second-sight of some Astn^an age, 4J0 

Sat compass'd with professors : they, the while, 
Discuss'd a doubt and tost it to and fro : 
A clamor thicken'd, mixt with inmost terms 
Of art and science : Lady Blanche alone 
Of faded form and haughtiest lineaments, 
With all her autumn tresses falsely brown, 
Shot sidelong daggers at us, a tiger-cat 



34 THE PRINCESS: [ii. 

In act to spring. 

At last a solemn grace 
Concluded, and we sought the gardens : there 
One walk'd reciting by herself, and one 430 

In this hand held a volume as to read, 
And smoothed a petted peacock down with that : 
Some to a low song oar'd a shallop by, 
Or under arches of the marble bridge 
Hung, shadow 'd from the heat : some hid and sought 
In the orange thickets : others tost a ball 
Above the fountain-jets, and back again 
With laughter : others lay about the lawns, 
Of the older sort, and murmur'd that their May 
Was passing : what was learning unto them ? 440 

They wish'd to marry ; they could rule a house ; 
Men hated learned women : but we three 
Sat muffled like the Fates ; and often came 
Melissa hitting all we saw with shafts 
Of gentle satire, kin to charity. 

That harm'd not : then day droopt ; the chapel-bells 
Call'd us : we left the walks ; we mixt with those 
Six hundred maidens clad in purest white, 
Before two streams of light from wall to wall, 
While the great organ almost burst his pipes, 4r>o 

Groaning for power, and rolling thro' the court 
A long melodious thunder to the sound 
Of solemn psalms, and silver litanies. 
The work of Ida, to call down from Heaven 
A blessing on her labors for the world. 



[II.] A MEDLEY. 35 



III. 



Sweet and low, sweet and low, 

Wind of the western sea, 
Low, low, breathe and blow, 

Wind of the western sea ! 
Over the rolling waters go. 
Come from the dying moon, and blow, 

Blow him again to me ; 
While my little one, while my pretty one. sleeps. 

Sleep and rest, sleep and rest, 

Father will come to thee soon ; 
Rest, rest, on mother's breast, 

Father will come to thee soon; 
Father will come to his babe in the nest, 
Silver sails all out of the west 

Under the silver moon : 
Sleep, my little one, sleep, my pretty one, sleep. 

Morn in the white wake of the morning star 
Came furrowing all the orient into gold. 
We rose, and each by other drest with care 
Descended to the courts that lay three parts 
In shadow, but the ISIuses' heads were touch'd 
Above the darkness from their native East. 

There while w^e stood beside the fount, and watch'd 
Or seem'd to watch the dancing bubble, approach'd 
Melissa, tinged with \\3.n from lack of sleep, 
Or grief, and glow^ing round her dewy eyes i( 



36 THE PRINCESS: [in. 

The circled Iris of a night of tears ; 

' And fly,' she cried, ' O fly, while yet you may ! 

My mother knows : ' and when I ask'd her 'how,' 

' My fault,' she wept, ' my fault ! and yet not mine ; 

Yet mine in part. O hear me, pardon me. 

My mother, 'tis her wont from night to night 

To rail at Lady Psyche and her side. 

She says the Princess should have been the Head, 

Herself and Lady Psyche the two arms ; 

And so it was agreed when first they came 20 

But Lady Psyche was the right hand now, 

And she the left, or not, or seldom used ; 

Hers more than half the students, all the love. 

And so last night she fell to canvass you : 

Her countrywomen ! she did not envy her. 

" Who ever saw such wild barbarians ? 

Girls ? — more like men ! " and at these words the 

snake, 
My secret, seem'd to stir within my breast ; 
And oh, Sirs, could I help it, but my cheek 
Began to burn and burn, and her lynx eye 30 

To fix and make me hotter, till she laugh'd : 
'' O marvellously modest maiden, you ! 
Men I girls, like men ! why, if they had been men 
You need not set your thoughts in rubric thus 
For wholesale comment." Pardon, I am shamed 
That I must needs repeat for my excuse 
What looks so little graceful : "men" (for still 
My mother went revolving on the word) 
" And so they are, — very like men indeed — 
And with that woman closeted for hours ! " 40 



III.] A MEDLEY. 37 

Then came these dreadful words out one by one, 

" Why — these — are — men : " I shudder'd : '" and you 

know it." 
" O ask me nothing," I said : "And she knows too. 
And she conceals it." So my mother clutch'd 
The truth at once, but with no word from me ; 
And now thus early risen she goes to inform 
The Princess : Lady Psyche will be crush'd ; 
But you may yet be saved, and therefore fly: 
But heal me with your pardon ere you go.' 

'What pardon, sweet Melissa, for a blush?' 50 

Said Cyril : ' Pale one, blush again : than wear 
Those lilies, better blush our lives away. 
Yet let us breathe for one hour more in Heaven,' 
He added, 'lest some classic Angel speak 
In scorn of us, " they mounted, Ganymedes, 
To tumble, Vulcans, on the second morn." 
But I will melt this marble into wax 
To yield us farther furlough : ' and he went. 

Melissa shook her doubtful curls, and thought 
He scarce would prosper. 'Tell us,' Florian ask'd, co 
'How grew this feud betwixt the right and left.' 
'O long ago,' she said, 'betwixt these two 
Division smoulders hidden ; 'tis my mother, 
Too jealous, often fretful as the wind 
Pent in a crevice : much I bear with her : 
I never knew my father, but she says 
(God help her) she was wedded to a fool ; 
And still she rail'd against the state of things. 



38 THE PRINCESS: [in. 

She had the care of Lady Ida's youth, 

And from the Queen's decease she brought her up. 70 

But when your sister came she won the heart 

Of Ida : they were still together, grew 

(For so they said themselves) inosculated ; 

Consonant chords that shiver to one note ; 

One mind in all things : yet my mother still 

Affirms your Psyche thieved her theories, 

And angled with them for her pupil's love : 

She calls her plagiarist ; I know not what : 

But I must go : I dare not tarry : ' and light, 

As flies the shadow of a bird, she fled. so 

Then murmur'd Florian, gazing after her, 
^An open-hearted maiden, true and pure. 
If I could love, why this were she : how pretty 
Her blushing was, and how she blush'd again, 
As if to close with Cyril's random wish : 
Not like your Princess cramm'd with erring pride. 
Nor like poor Psyche whom she drags in tow.' 

'The crane,' I said, ' may chatter of the crane, 
The dove may murmur of the dove, but I, 
An eagle, clang an eagle to the sphere. 90 

My princess, O my princess ! true she errs, 
But in her own grand way : being herself 
Three times more noble than three score of men, 
She sees herself in every woman else. 
And so she wears her error like a crown 
To blind the truth and me : for her, and her, 
Hebes are they to hand ambrosia, mix 



III.] A MEDLEY. 39 

The nectar; but — ah she — whene'er she moves 

The Samian Here rises and she speaks 

A Memnon smitten with the morning Sun.' 100 

So saying, from the court we paced, and gain'd 
The terrace ranged along the Northern front, 
And leaning there on those balusters, high 
Above the empurpled champaign, drank the gale 
That blown about the foliage underneath, 
And sated with the innumerable rose, 
Beat balm upon your eyelids. Hither came 
Cyril, and yawning, ' O hard task,' he cried ; 
' No fighting shadows here ! I forced a way 
Thro' solid opposition crabb'd and gnarl'd. 110 

Better to clear prime forests, heave and thump 
A league of street in summer solstice down. 
Than hammer at this reverend gentlewoman. 
I knock'd and, bidden, enter'd ; found her there 
At point to move, and settled in her eyes 
The green malignant light of coming storm. 
Sir, I was courteous, every phrase well-oil'd. 
As man's could be ; yet maiden-meek I pray'd 
Concealment: she demanded who we were. 
And why we came .'* I fabled nothing fair, 120 

But, your example pilot, told her all. 
Up went the hush'd amaze of hand and eye. 
But when I dwelt upon your old affiance. 
She answer'd sharply that I talk'd astray. 
I urged the fierce inscription on the gate. 
And our three lives. True — we had limed ourselves 
With open eyes, and we must take the chance, 



40 THE PRINCESS: [in. 

But such extremes, I told her, well might harm 

The woman's cause. " Not more than now," she 

said, 
'' So puddled as it is with favoritism." 130 

I tried the mother's heart. Shame might befall 
Melissa, knowing, saying not she knew : 
Her answer was, " Leave me to deal with that." 
I spoke of war to come and many deaths, 
And she replied, her duty was to speak. 
And duty duty, clear of consequences. 
I grew discouraged. Sir ; but since I knew 
No rock so hard but that a little wave 
May beat admission in a thousand years, 
I recommenced ; " Decide not ere you pause. i40 

I find you here but in the second place. 
Some say the third — the authentic foundress you. 
I offer boldly : we will seat you highest : 
Wink at our advent : help my prince to gain 
His rightful bride, and here I promise you 
Some palace in our land, where you shall reign 
The head and heart of all our fair she-world, 
And your great name flow on with broadening time 
Eorever.' '' Well, she balanced this a little. 
And told me she would answer us to-day, 150 

Meantime be mute : thus much, nor more I gained.' 

He ceasing, came a message from the Head. 
' That afternoon the Princess rode to take 
The dip of certain strata to the North. 
Would we go with her ? we should find the land 
Worth seeing ; and the river made a fall 



111.] A MEDLEY. 41 

Out yonder : ' then she pointed on to where 
A double hill ran up his furrowy forks 
Beyond the thick-leaved platans of the vale. 

Agreed to, this, the day fled on thro' all I60 

Its range of duties to the appointed hour. 
Then summon'd to the porch we went. She stood 
Among her maidens, higher by the head. 
Her back against a pillar, her foot on one 
Of those tame leopards. Kittenlike he roU'd 
And paw'd about her sandal. I drew near ; 
I gazed. On a sudden my strange seizure came 
Upon me, the weird vision of our house : 
The Princess Ida seem'd a hollow show. 
Her gay-furr'd cats a painted fantasy, 170 

Her college and her maidens, empty masks, 
And I myself the shadow of a dream, 
For all things were and were not. Yet I felt 
My heart beat thick with passion and with awe ; 
Then from my breast the involuntary sigh 
Brake, as she smote me with the light of eyes 
That lent my knee desire to kneel, and shook 
My pulses, till to horse we got. and so 
Went forth in long retinue following up 
The river as it narrow'd to the hills. 18O 

I rode beside her and to me she said : 
' O friend, we trust that you esteem'd us not 
Too harsh to your companion yestermorn ; 
Unwillingly we spake.' ' No — not to her,' 
I answer'd, ' but to one of whom we spake 



42 THE PRINCESS: [in. 

Your Highness might have seem'd the thing you say.' 
' Again ? ' she cried, * are you ambassadresses 
From him to me } we give you, being strange, 
A license : speak, and let the topic die.' 

I stammer'd that I knew him — could have 
wish'd — 190 

' Our king expects — Vv'as there no precontract .'' 
There is no truer-hearted — ah, you seem 
All he prefigured, and he could not see 
The bird of passage flying south but long'd 
To follow : surely, if your Highness keep 
Your purport, you will shock him ev'n to death, 
Or baser courses, children of despair.' 

' Poor boy,' she said, ' can he not read — no books .'' 
Quoit, tennis, ball — no games ? nor deals in that 
Which men delight in, martial exercise ? 200 

To nurse a blind ideal like a girl, 
Methinks he seems no better than a girl ; 
As girls were once, as we ourself have been : 
We had our dreams ; perhaps he mixt with them : 
We touch on our dead self, nor shun to do it. 
Being other — since we learnt our meaning here. 
To lift the woman's fall'n divinity 
Upon an even pedestal with man.' 

She paused, and added with a haughtier smile, 
' And as to precontracts, we move, my friend, 210 

At no man's beck, but know ourself and thee, 
O Vashti, noble Vashti ! Summon'd out 



III.] A MEDLEY 43 

She kept her state, and left the drunken king 
To brawl at Shushan underneath the palms." 

' Alas your Highness breathes full East,' 1 said, 
' On that which leans to you. I know the Prince, 
I prize his truth : and then how^ vast a work 
To assail this gray preeminence of man ! 
You grant me license ; might I use it.'* think ; 
Ere half be done perchance your life may fail ; 220 

Then comes the feebler heiress of your plan, 
And takes and ruins all ; and thus your pains * 

May only make that footprint upon sand 
Which old-recurring waves of prejudice 
Resmooth to nothing : might I dread that you, 
With only Fame for spouse and your great deeds 
For issue, yet may live in vain, and miss. 
Meanwhile, what every woman counts her due, 
Love, children, happiness ? ' 

And she exclaim'd, 
' Peace, you young savage of the Northern wild ! 230 
\Miat ! tho' your Prince's love were like a God's, 
Have we not made ourself the sacrifice ? 
Y'ou are bold indeed : we are not talk'd to thus : 
Yet will we say for children, would they grew 
Like field-flowers everywhere ! we like them well : 
But children die ; and let me tell you, girl, 
Howe'er you babble, great deeds cannot die : 
They with the sun and moon renew their light 
Forever, blessing those that look on them. 
Children — that men may pluck them from our hearts, 
Kill us with pity, break us with ourselves — 241 



44 THE PRINCESS: [iii. 

O — children — there is nothing upon earth 

More miserable than she that has a son 

And sees him err : nor would we work for fame ; 

Tho' she perhaps might reap the applause of Great, 

Who learns the one pou sto whence after-hands 

May move the world, tho' she herself effect 

But little : w herefore up and act, nor shrink 

For fear our solid aim be dissipated 

By frail successors. Would, indeed, we had been, 250 

In lieu of many mortal flies, a race 

Of giants living, each, a thousand years. 

That we might see our own work out, and watch 

The sandy footprint harden into stone.' 

I answer'd nothing, doubtful in myself 
If that strange Poet-princess with her grand 
Imaginations might at all be won. 
And she broke out interpreting my thoughts : 

' No doubt we seem a kind of monster to you ; 
We are used to that : for women, up till this 2eo 

Cramp'd under worse than South-sea-isle taboo, 
Dwarfs of the gynaeceum, fail so far 
In high desire, they know not, cannot guess 
How much their welfare is a passion to us. 
If we could give them surer, quicker proof — 
Oh if our end were less achievable 
By slow approaches, than by single act 
Of immolation, any phase of death, 
We were as prompt to spring against the pikes. 
Or down the fiery gulf as talk of it, 270 

To compass our dear sisters' liberties.' 



III.] A MEDLEY. 45 

She bow'd as if to veil a noble tear ; 
And up we came to where the river sloped 
To plunge in cataract, shattering on black blocks 
A breath of thunder. O'er it shook the woods. 
And danced the color, and, below, stuck out 
The bones of some vast bulk that lived and roar'd 
Before man was. She gazed awhile and said, 
'As these rude bones to us, are we to her 
That will be.' 'Dare we dream of that,' I ask'd, 28O 
' Which wrought us, as the workman and his work. 
That practice betters ? ' ' How,' she cried, 'you love 
The metaphysics ! read and earn our prize, 
A golden broach : beneath an emerald plane 
Sits Diotima, teaching him that died 
Of hemlock ; our device ; wrought to the life ; 
She rapt upon her subject, he on her : 
For there are schools for all.' ' And yet,' I said, 
' Methinks I have not found among them all 
One anatomic' ' Nay, we thought of that,' 290 

She answered, ' but it pleased us not : in truth 
We shudder but to dream our maids should ape 
Those monstrous males that carve the living hound. 
And cram him with the fragments of the grave. 
Or in the dark dissolving human heart. 
And holy secrets of this microcosm. 
Dabbling a shameless hand with shameful jest, 
Encarnalize their spirits : yet we know 
Knowledge is knowledge, and this matter hangs : 
Howbeit ourself, foreseeing casualty, 300 

Nor willing men should come among us, learnt, 
For many weary moons before we came, 



46 THE I'KINCESS: [ill. 

This craft of healing. Were you sick, ourself 

Would tend upon you. To your question now, 

Which touches on the workman and his work. 

Let there be light and there was light : 'tis so: 

f'or was, and is, and will be, are but is ; 

And all creation is one act at once, 

The birth of light : but we that are not all. 

As parts, can see but parts, now this, now that, sio 

And live, perforce, from thought to thought, and make 

One act a phantom of succession : thus 

Our weakness somehow shapes the shadow, Time ; 

But in the shadow will we work, and mould 

The woman to the fuller day.' 

She spake 
\\'ith kindled eyes : we rode a league beyond, 
And, o'er a bridge of pinewood crossing, came 
On flowery levels underneath the crag. 
Full of all beauty. ' O how sweet,' I said, 
(For I was half-oblivious of my mask) 320 

'To linger here with one that loved us.' 'Yea,' 
She answered, ' or with fair philosophies 
That lift the fancy ; for indeed these fields 
Are lovely, lovelier not the Elysian lawns. 
Where paced the Demigods of old, and saw 
The soft white vapor streak the crowned towers 
Built to the Sun : ' then, turning to her maids, 
* Pitch our pavilion here upon the sward ; 
Lay out the viands.' At the word, they raised 
A tent of satin, elaborately wrought 830 

With fair Corinna's triumph ; here she stood, 
Engirt with many a florid maiden-cheek, 



III.] A MEDLEY. 47 

The woman-conqueror ; woman-conquer"d there 

The bearded Victor of ten-thousand hymns, 

And all the men mourn 'd at his side : but we 

Set forth to climb ; then, climbing, Cyril kept 

With Psyche, with Melissa Florian, I 

With mine affianced. Many a little hand 

Glanced like a touch of sunshine on the rocks, 

Many a light foot shone like a jewel set 340 

In the dark crag : and then we turn'd, we wound 

About the cliffs, the copses, out and in. 

Hammering and clinking, chattering stony names 

Of shale and hornblende, rag and trap and tuft". 

Amygdaloid and trachyte, till the Sun 

Grew broader toward his death and fell, and all 

The rosy heights came out above the lawns. 



48 THE PRINCESS: [iv. 



IV. 



The splendor falls on castle-walls 

And snowy summits old in story ; 
The long light shakes across the lakes, 
And the wild cataract leaps in glory. 
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying, 
Blow, bugle ; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying. 

P hark, O hear ! how thin and clear, 
And thinner, clearer, farther going ! 
O sweet and far from cliff and scar 
The horns of Elfland faintly blowing ! 
Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying: 
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying. 

O love, they die in yon rich sky, 

They faint on hill or field or river; 
Our echoes roll from soul to soul. 
And grow forever and forever. 
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying. 
And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying. 

'There sinks the nebulous star we call the Sun, 
If that hypothesis of theirs be sound,' 
Said Ida ; ' let us down and rest; ' and we 
Down from the lean and wrinkled precipices. 
By every coppice-feather'd chasm and cleft, 
Dropt thro' the ambrosial gloom to where below 
No bigger than a glow-worm shone the tent 
Lamp-lit from the inner. Once she lean'd on me, 
Descending ; once or twice she lent her hand, 



IV.] A .MEDLEY. 49 

And blissful palpitations in the blood, 10 

Stirring a sudden transport rose and fell. 

But when we planted level feet, and dipt 
Beneath the satin dome and enter'd in, 
There leaning deep in broider'd down we sank 
Our elbows : on a tripod in the midst 
A fragrant flame rose, and before us glow'd 
Fruit, blossom, viand, amber wine, and gold. 

Then she, ' Let some one sing to us : lightlier move 
The minutes fledged with music ; ' and a maid, 
Of those beside her, smote her harp, and sang. 20 

' Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean, 
Tears from the depth of some divine despair 
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes, 
In looking on the iiappy Autumn-fields, 
And thinking of the days that are no more. 

' Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail, 
That brings our friends up from the underworld, 
Sad as the last which reddens over one 
That sinks with all we love below the verge; 
So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more. 30 

' Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns 
The earlies pipe of half-awaken'd birds 
To dying ears, when unto dying eyes 
The casement slowly grows a glimmering square; 
So sad, so strange, the days that are no more. 

' Dear as remember'd kisses after death, 
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feign'd 
On lips that are for others ; deep as love. 



50 THE PRINCESS: [iv. 

Deep as first love, and wild with all regret ; 

O Death in Life, the days that are no more.' 40 

She ended with such passion that the tear 
She sang of, shook and fell, an erring pearl 
Lost in her bosom : but with some disdain 
Answered the Princess, ' If indeed there haunt 
About the moulder'd lodges of the Past 
So sweet a voice and vague, fatal to men, 
\\e\[ needs it we should cram our ears with wool 
And so pace by : but thine are fancies hatch'd 
Jn silken-folded idleness ; nor is it 

Wiser to weep a true occasion lost, no 

But trim our sails, and let old bygones be. 
While down the streams that float us each and all 
To the issue, goes, like glittering bergs of ice, 
Throne after throne, and molten on the waste 
Becomes a cloud : for all things serve their time 
Toward that great year of equal mights and rights, 
Nor would I fight with iron laws, in the end 
Found golden : let the past be past ; let be 
Their cancell'd Babels : tho' the rough kex break 
The starr'd mosaic, and the beard-blown goat c.o 

Hang on the shaft, and the wild fig-tree split 
Their monstrous idols, care not while we hear 
A trumpet in the distance pealing news 
Of better, and Hope, a poising eagle, burns 
Above the unrisen morrow : ' then to me ; 
' Know you no song of your own land,' she said, 
' Not such as moans about the retrospect. 
But deals with the other distance and the hues 
Of promise ; not a death's-head at the wine.' 



IV.] A MEDLEY. 51 

Then I remember'd one myself had made. 70 

What time I watch'd the swallow winging south 
From mine own land, part made long since, and part 
Now while I sang, and maidenlike as far 
As I could ape their treble, did I sing. 

• O Swallow, Swallow, flying, flying South, 
Fly to her, and fall upon her gilded eaves, 
And tell her, tell her, what I tell to thee, 

' O tell her. Swallow, thou that knowest each, 
That bright and fierce and fickle is the South, 
And dark and true and tender is the North. 80 

' O Swallow, Swallow, if I could follow, and light 
Upon her lattice, I would pipe and trill, 
And cheep and twitter twenty million loves. 

' O were I thou that she might take me in, 
And lay me on her bosom, and her heart 
Would rock the snowy cradle till I died. 

' Why lingereth she to clothe her heart with love, 
Delaying as the tender ash delays 
To clothe herself, when all the woods are green? 

' O tell her, Swallow, that thy brood is flown; 90 

Say to her, I do but wanton in the South, 
But in the North long since my nest is made. 

' O tell her, brief is life but love is long. 
And brief the sun of summer in the North, 
And brief the moon of beauty in the South. 

' O Swallow, flying from the golden woods, 
Fly to her, and pipe and woo her, and make her mine^ 
And tell her, tell her, that I follow thee.' 



52 THE PRINCESS: [iv. 

I ceased, and all the ladies, each at each. 
Like the Ithacensian suitors in old time, loo 

Stared with great eyes, and laugh'd with alien lips, 
And knew not what they meant ; for still my voice 
Rang false : but smiling, ' Not for thee,' she said, 
' O Bulbul, any rose of Gulistan 
Shall burst her veil : marsh-divers, rather, maid, 
Shall croak thee sister, or the meadow-crake 
Grate her harsh kindred in the grass : and this 
A mere love-poem ! O for such, my friend. 
We hold them slight : they mind us of the time 
When we made bricks in Egypt. Knaves are men, no 
That lute and flute fantastic tenderness, 
And dress the victim to the offering up, 
And paint the gates of Hell with Paradise, 
And play the slave to gain the tyranny. 
Poor soul ! I had a maid of honor once ; 
She wept her true eyes blind for such a one, 
A rogue of canzonets and serenades. 
I loved her. Peace be with her. She is dead. 
So they blaspheme the muse ! But great is song 
Used to great ends : ourself have often tried 120 

Valkyrian hymns, or into rhythm have dash'd 
The passion of the prophetess ; for song 
Is duer unto freedom, force and growth 
Of spirit than to junketing and love. 
Love is it ? Would this same mock-love, and this 
Mock-Hymen were laid up like winter bats, 
Till all men grew to rate us at our worth. 
Not vassals to be beat, nor petty babes 
To be dandled, no, but living wills, and sphered 



IV.] A MEDLEY. 53 

\\'hole in ourselves and owed to none. Enough ! 130 
But now to leaven play with profit, you, 
Know you no song, the true growth of your soil, 
That gives the manners of your countrywomen? ' 

She spoke and turn'd her sumptuous head with eyes 
Of shining expectation fixt on mine. 
Then while I dragg'd my brains for such a song, 
Cyril, with whom the bell-mouth'd glass had wrought, 
Or master'd by the sense of sport, began 
To troll a careless, careless tavern-catch 
Of Moll and Meg, and strange experiences 140 

Unmeet for ladies. Florian nodded at him, 
I frowning. Psyche flush'd and wann'd and shook; 
The lilylike Melissa droop'd her brows ; 

• Forbear,' the Princess cried ; * Forbear, Sir,' I : 
And heated thro' and thro' with wrath and love, 
I smote him on the breast ; he started up ; 
There rose a shriek as of a city sack'd : 
Melissa clamored, ' Flee the death ; ' ' To horse. 
Said Ida : ' home I to horse ! " and fled, as flies 

A troop of snowy doves athwart the dusk, 150 

When some one batters at the dovecote-doors ; 

Disorderly the women. Alone I stood 

With Florian, cursing Cyril, vext at heart. 

In the pavilion: there like parting hopes 

I heard them passing from me ; hoof by hoof. 

And every hoof a knell to my desires. 

Clang'd on the bridge : and then another shriek. 

* The Head, the Head, the Princess, O the Head I ' 
For blind with rage she miss'd the plank, and roH'd 



54 THE PRL\X"ESS: [iv. 

Ill the river. Out I sprang from glow to gloom : iw* 

There whirl'd her white robe like a blossom'd branch 

Rapt to the horrible fall : a glance I gave. 

Xo more ; but woman-vested as I was 

Plunged: and the flood drew: yet I caught her: 

then 
Oaring one arm. and bearing in my left 
The weight of all the hopes of half the world. 
Strove to buffet to land in vain. A tree 
Was half-disrooted from his place and stoop'd 
To drench his dark locks in the gurgling wave 
Mid-channel. Right on this we drov^e and caught. iTd 
And grasping down the boughs I gain'd the shore. 

There stood her maidens glimmeringly group'd 
In the hollow bank. One reaching forward drew 
My burthen from mine arms ; they cried, ' she lives : " 
They bore her back into the tent: but I, 
So much a kind of shame within me wrought. 
Not yet endured to meet her opening eyes. 
Nor found my friends : but push"d alone on foot 
(For since her horse was lost I left her mine) 
Across the woods, and less from Indian craft u. 

Than beelike instinct hiveward, found at length 
The garden-portals. Two great statues. Art 
And Science, Caryatids, lifted up 
A weight of emblem, and betwixt were valves 
Of open-work in which the hunter rued 
His rash intrusion, manlike, but his brows 
Had sprouted, and the branches thereupon 
Spread out at top. and grimly spiked the gates. 



IV.] A .MEDLEY. 55 

A little space was left between the horns. 
Thro' which I clamber'd o'er at top with pain. is'o 

Dropt on the sward, and up the linden-walks. 
And, tost on thoughts that changed from hue to hue, 
Now pouring on the glowworm, now the star. 
I paced the terrace, till the Bear had wheel'd 
Thro' a great arc his seven slow suns. 

A step 
Of lightest echo, then a loftier form 
Than female, moving thro" the uncertain gloom, 
Disturb'd me with the doubt 'if this were she,' 
But it was Florian. ' Hist, O hist,' he said. 
They seek us : out so late is out of rules. -^w 

Moreover '' seize the strangers " is the cry. 
How came you here ? ' I told him : ' I," said he, 
' Last of the train, a moral leper, I, 
To whom none spake, half-sick at heart, return'd. 
Arriving all confused among the rest 
With hooded brows I crept into the hall, 
And, couch'd behind a Judith, underneat 
The head of Plolofernes peep'd and saw. 
Girl after girl was call'd to trial : each 
Disclaim'd all knowledge of us : last of all, 210 

Melissa : trust me, Sir, I pitied her. 
She, question'd if she knew us men, at first 
Was silent ; closer prest, denied it not : 
And then, demanded if her mother knew, 
Or Psyche, she affirm'd not, or denied : 
From whence the Royal mind, familiar with her. 
Easily gather'd either guilt. She sent 
For Psvche, but she was not there ; she call'd 



56 THE PRINCESS [iv. 

For Psyche's child to cast it from the doors ; 

She sent for Blanche to accuse her face to face ; 220 

And I slipt out: but whither will you now? 

And where are Psyche, Cyril ? both are fled : 

What, if together ? that were not so well. 

Would rather we had never come ! I dread 

His wildness, and the chances of the dark.' 

'And yet,' I said, 'you wrong him more than I 
That struck him : this is proper to the clown, 
Tho' smock'd, or furr'd and purpled, still the clown, 
To harm the thing that trusts him, and to shame 
That which he says he loves : for Cyril, howe'er 230 
He deal in frolic, as to-night — the song 
Might have been worse and sinn'd in grosser lips 
Beyond all pardon — as it is, I hold 
These flashes on the surface are not he. 
He has a solid base of temperament : 
But as the water-lily starts and slides 
Upon the level in little puffs of wind, 
Tho' anchor'd to the bottom, such is he.' 

Scarce had I ceased when from a tamarisk near 
Two Proctors leapt upon us, crying, ' Names : ' 240 

He, standing still, was clutch'd ; but I began 
To thrid the musky-circled mazes, wind 
And double in and out the boles, and race 
By all the fountains : fleet I was of foot : 
Before me shower'd the rose in flakes ; behind 
I heard the puff'd pursuer ; at mine ear 
Bubbled the nightingale and heeded not, 



IV.] A MEDLEY. 57 

And secret laughter tickled all my soul. 

At last I hook'd my ankle in a vine, 

That claspt the feet of a Mnemosyne, 250 

And falling on my face was caught and known. 

They haled us to the Princess where she sat 
High in the hall : above her droop'd a lamp. 
And made the single jewel on her brow 
Burn like the mystic fire on a mast-head, 
Prophet of storm : a handmaid on each side 
Bow'd toward her, combing out her long black hair 
Damp from the river ; and close behind her stood 
Eight daughters of the plough, stronger than men. 
Huge women blowzed with health, and wind, and rain, 
And labor. Each was like a Druid rock ; 201 

Or like a spire of land that stands apart 
Cleft from the main, and wail'd about with mews. 

Then, as we came, the crowd dividing clove 
An advent to the throne : and there beside. 
Half-naked as if caught at once from bed 
And tumbled on the purple footcloth, lay 
The lily-shining child ; and on the left, 
Bow'd on her palms and folded up from wrong. 
Her round white shoulder shaken with her sobs, 270 
Melissa knelt ; But Lady Blanche erect 
Stood up and spake, an affluent orator. 

' It was not thus, O Princess, in old days : 
You prized my counsel, lived upon my lips : 
I led you then to all the Castalies ; 



58 THE PRINCESS: [iv. 

I fed you with the milk of every Muse ; 

I loved you like this kneeler, and you me, 

Your second mother : those were gracious times. 

Then came your new friend : you began to change — 

1 saw it and grieved — to slacken and to cool ; 28O 

Till taken with her seeming openness 

You turn'd your warmer currents all to her, 

To me you froze : this was my meed for all. 

Yet I bore up in part from ancient love, 

And partly that I hoped to win you back. 

And partly conscious of my own deserts. 

And partly that you were my civil head. 

And chiefly you were born for something great, 

In which I might your fellow- worker be. 

When time should serve ; and thus a noble scheme 200 

Grew up from seed we two long since had sown ; 

In us true growth, in her a Jonah's gourd, 

Up in one night and due to sudden sun : 

We took this palace ; but even from the first 

You stood in your own light and darken'd mine. 

What student came but that you planed her path 

To Lady Psyche, younger, not so wise, 

A foreigner, and I your countrywoman, 

I your old friend and tried, she new in all ? 

But still her lists were swell'd and mine were lean ; 300 

Yet I bore up in hope she would be known : 

Then came these wolves: //uy knew her: t/uy endured. 

Long-closeted with her the yestermorn, 

To tell her what they were, and she to hear : 

And me none told : not less to an eye like mine, 

A lidless watcher of the public weal. 



IV.] A MEDLEY. 59 

Last night, their mask was patent, and my foot 

Was to you : but 1 thought again : I fear'd 

To meet a cold " We thank you, we shall hear of it 

From Lady Psyche : " you had gone to her, 310 

She told, perforce : and winning easy grace, 

No doubt, for slight delay, remain 'd among us 

In our young nursery still unknown, the stem 

Less grain than touchwood, while my honest heat 

Were all miscounted as malignant haste 

To push my rival out of place and power. 

But public use required she should be known ; 

And since my oath was ta'en for public use, 

I broke the letter of it to keep the sense. 

I spoke not then at first, but watch'd them well, 320 

Saw that they kept apart, no mischief done ; 

And yet this day (tho' you should hate me for it) 

I came to tell you ; found that you had gone, 

Ridd'n to the hills, she likewise : now, I thought. 

That surely she will speak ; if not, then I : 

Did she ? These monsters blazon'd what they were, 

According to the coarseness of their kind, 

For thus I hear ; and known at last (my work) 

And full of cowardice and guilty shame, 

I grant in her some sense of shame, she flies ; 330 

And I remain on whom to wreak your rage. 

I, that have lent my life to build up yours, 

I that have wasted here health, wealth, and time, 

And talents, I — you know it — I will not boast : 

Dismiss me, and I prophesy your plan. 

Divorced from my experience, will be chaff 

For every gust of chance, and men will say 



6o THE PRINCESS: [iv. 

We did not know the real light, but chased 
The wisp that flickers where no foot can tread.' 

She ceased : the Princess answer'd coldly, ' Good : 
Your oath is broken : we dismiss you : go. 34i 

For this lost lamb (she pointed to the child) 
Our mind is changed : we take it to ourself.' 

Thereat the Lady stretch'd a vulture throat, 
And shot from crooked lips a haggard smile. 
'The plan was mine. I built the nest,' she said, 
' To hatch the cuckoo. Rise ! ' and stoop'd to updrag 
Melissa : she, half on her mother propt, 
Half-drooping from her, turn'd her face, and cast 
A liquid look on Ida, full of prayer, 350 

Which melted Florian's fancy as she hung, 
A Niobean daughter, one arm out, 
Appealing to the bolts of Heaven ; and while 
We gazed upon her came a little stir 
About the doors, and on a sudden rush'd 
Among us, out of breath, as one pursued, 
A woman-post in flying raiment. Fear 
Stared in her eyes, and chalk'd her face, and wing'd 
Her transit to the throne, whereby she fell, 
Delivering seaPd despatches, which the Head sm 

Took half-amazed, and in her lion's mood 
Tore open, silent we with blind surmise 
Regarding, while she read, till over brow 
And cheek and bosom brake the wrathful bloom 
As of some fire against a stormy cloud, 
When the wild peasant rights himself, the rick 



IV.] A MEDLEY. 6i 

Flames, and his anger reddens in the heavens ; 

For anger most it seem'd, while now her breast, 

Beaten with some great passion at her heart, 

Palpitated, her hand shook, and we heard 370 

In the dead hush, the papers that she held 

Rustle : at once the lost lamb at her feet 

Sent out a bitter bleating for its dam ; 

The plantive cry jarr'd on her ire ; she crush'd 

The scrolls together, made a sudden turn 

As if to speak, but, utterance failing her, 

She whirl'd them on to me, as who should say, 

'Read,' and I read — two letters — one her sire's. 

' Fair daughter, when we sent the Prince your way 
We knew not your ungracious laws, which learnt, sso 
We, conscious of what temper you are built, 
Came all in haste to hinder wrong, but fell 
Into his father's hand, who has this night, 
You lying close upon his territory, 
Slipt round and in the dark invested you, 
And here he keeps me hostage for his son.' 

The second was my father's, running thus : 
' You have our son : touch not a hair of his head : 
Render him up unscathed : give him your hand : 
Cleave to your contract : tho' indeed we hear 390 

You hold the woman is the better man : 
A rampant heresy, such as if it spread 
Would make all women kick against their Lords 
Thro' all the world, and which might well deserve 
That we this night should pluck your palace down ; 



62 THE PRINCESS: [iv. 

And we will do -t, unless you send us back 
Our son, on the instant, whole.' 

So far I read ; 
And then stood up and spoke impetuously. 

' O not to pry and peer on your reserve, 
But led by golden wishes, and a hope 400 

The child of regal compact, did I break 
Your precinct ; not a scorner of your sex 
But venerator, zealous it should be 
All that it might be : hear me, for I bear, 
Tho' man, yet human, whatsoe'er your wrongs. 
From the flaxen curl to the gray lock a life 
Less mine than yours: my nurse would tell me of you; 
I babbled for you, as babies for the moon, 
Vague brightness ; when a boy, you stoop'd to me 
From all high places, lived in all fair lights, 410 

Came in long breezes rapt from inmost south 
And blown to inmost north ; at eve and dawn 
With Ida, Ida, Ida, rang the woods ; 
The leader wildswan in among the stars 
Would clang it, and lapt in wreaths of glow-worm light 
The mellow breaker murmur'd Ida. Now, 
Because I would have reach' d you, had you been 
Sphered up with Cassiopeia, or the enthroned 
Persephone in Hades, now at length, 
Those winters of abeyance all worn out, 420 

A man I came to see you : but, indeed, 
Not in this frequence can I lend full tongue, 
O noble Ida, to those thoughts that wait 
On you, their centre : let me say but this, 



IV.] A MEDLEY. 63 

That many a famous man and woman, town 
And landskip, have I heard of, after seen 
The dwarfs of presage : tho' when known, there grew 
Another kind of beauty in detail 
Made them worth knowing ; but in you I found 
My boyish dream involved and dazzled down 430 

And master'd, while that after-beauty makes 
Such head from act to act, from hour to hour, 
Within me, that except you slay me here. 
According to your bitter statute-book, 
I cannot cease to follow you, as they say 
The seal does music; who desire you more 
Than growing boys their manhood ; dying lips, 
With many thousand matters left to do. 
The breath of life ; O more than poor men wealth. 
Than sick men health — yours, yours, not mine — but 
half 4-io 

Without you ; with you, whole ; and of those halves 
You worthiest ; and howe'er you block and bar 
Your heart with system out from mine, I hold 
That it becomes no man to nurse despair. 
But in the teeth of clench'd antagonisms 
To follow up the worthiest till he die : 
Yet that I came not all unauthorized 
Behold your father's letter.' 

On one knee 
Kneeling, I gave it, which she caught, and dash'd 
Unopen'd at her feet : a tide of fierce 450 

Invective seem'd to wait behind her lips, 
As waits a river level with the dam 
Ready to burst and flood the world with foam : 



64 THE PRINCESS: [iv. 

And so she would have spoken, but there rose 

A hubbub in the court of half the maids 

Gather'd together: from the illumined hall 

Long lanes of splendor slanted o'er a press 

Of snowy shoulders, thick as herded ewes, 

And rainbow robes, and gems and gemlike eyes, 

And gold and golden heads ; they to and fro 46o 

Fluctuated, as flowers in storm, some red, some pale. 

All open-mouth'd, all gazing to the light, 

Some crying there w^as an army in the land, 

And some^that men were in the very walls, 

And some they cared not ; till a clamor grew 

As of a new-world Babel, woman-built, 

And worse-confounded : high above them stood 

The placid marble Muses, looking peace. 



Not peace she look'd, the Head : but rising up 
Robed in the long night of her deep hair, so 470 

To the open window moved, remaining there 
Fixt like a beacon-tower above the waves 
Of tempest, when the crimson-rolling eye 
Glares ruin, and the wild birds on the light 
Dash themselves dead. She stretch'd her arms and 

called 
Across the tumult and the tumult fell. 

' What fear ye brawlers ? am not I your Head .'' 
On me, me, me, the storm first breaks: /dare 
All these male thunderbolts ; what is it ye fear ? 
Peace ! there are those to avenge us and they come : 480 
If not, — myself were like enough, O girls, 



IV.] A .MEDLE\". 65 

To unfurl the maiden banner of our rights. 

And clad in iron burst the ranks of war, 

Or, falling, protomartyr of our cause. 

Die : yet I blame you not so much for fear ; 

Six thousand years of fear have made you that 

From which I would redeem you : but for those 

That stir this hubbub — you and you — I know 

Your faces there in the crowd — to-morrow morn 

We hold a great convention : then shall they 4.to 

That love their voices more than duty, learn 

With whom they deal, dismiss'd in shame to live 

Xo wiser than their mothers, household stuff. 

Live chattels, mincers of each other's fame. 

Full of weak poison, turnspits for the clown, 

The drunkard's football, laughing-stocks of Time, 

Whose brains are in their hands and in their heels, 

But fit to flaunt, to dress, to dance, to thrum. 

To tramp, to scream, to burnish, and to scour. 

Forever slaves at home and fools abroad.' 500 

She, ending, waved her hands : thereat the crowd 
Muttering, dissolved : then with a smile, that look'd 
A stroke of cruel sunshine on tfte clift", 
When all the glens are drown'd in azure gloom 
Of thunder-shower, she floated to us, and said : 

' You have done well and like a gentleman. 
And like a prince : you have our thanks for all : 
And you look well too in your woman's dress : 
Well have you done and like a gentleman. 
You saved our life : we owe you bitter thanks : 510 



66 THE PRINCESS: [iv. 

Better have died and spilt our bones in the flood — 
Then men had said — but now — What hinders me 
To take such bloody vengeance on you both ? — 
Yet since our father — Wasps in our good hive, 
You would-be quenchers of the light to be, 
Barbarians, grosser than your native bears — 

would I had his sceptre for one hour ! 

You that have dared to break our bound, and gull'd 
Our servants, wrong'd and lied and thwarted us — 
/wed with thee ! / bound by precontract 520 

Your bride, your bondslave ! not tho' all the gold 
That veins the world were pack'd to make your crown. 
And every spoken tongue should lord you. Sir, 
Your falsehood and yourself are hateful to us : 

1 trample on your offers and on you : 
Begone : we will not look upon you more. 
Here, push them out at gates. ' 

In wrath she spake. 
Then those eight mighty daughters of the plough 
Bent their broad faces toward us and address'd 
Their motion : twice I sought to plead my cause, 5.so 
But on my shoulder hung their heavy hands. 
The weight of destiny : so from her face 
They push'd us, down the steps, and thro' the court. 
And with grim laughter thrust out at gates. 

We cross'd the street and gain'd a petty mound 
Beyond it, whence we saw the lights and heard 
The voices murmuring. While I listen 'd, came 
On a sudden the weird seizure and the doubt : 
I seem'd to move among a world of ghosts ; 



n.] A MEDLEY. 67 

The Princess with her monstrous woman-guard. 540 

The jest and earnest working side by side, 

The cataract and the tumult and the kings 

Were shadows ; and the long fantastic night 

With all its doings had and had not been, 

And all things were and were not. 

This went by 
As strangely as it came, and on my spirits 
Settled a gentle cloud of melancholy ; 
Not long : I shook it off ; for spite of doubts 
And sudden ghostly shadowings I was one 
To whom the touch of all mischance but came 550 

As night to him that sitting on a hill 
Sees the midsummer, midnight, Norway sun 
Set into sunrise ; then we moved away. 



68 THE PRINCESS: [iv. 



INTERLUDE. 

Thy voice is heard thro' rolling drums, 

That beat to battle where he stands; 
Thy face across his fancy comes, 

And gives the battle to his hands: 
A moment, while the trumpets blow, 

He sees his brood about thy knee; 
The next, like fire he meets the foe, 560 

And strikes him dead for thine and thee. 



So Lilla sang : we thought her half-possess'd, 

She struck such warbling fury thro' the words ; 

And, after, feigning pique at what she call'd 

The raillery, or grotesque, or false sublime — 

Like one that wishes at a dance to change 

The music — clapt her hands and cried for war, 

Or some grand fight to kill and make an end : 

And he that next inherited the tale 

Half turning to the broken statue, said, 570 

' Sir Ralph has got your colors : if I prove 

Your knight, and fight your battle, what for me ? ' 

It chanced, her empty glove upon the tomb 

Lay by her like a model of her hand. 

She took it and she flung it. ' Fight,' she said, 

' And make us all we would be, great and good.' 

He knightlike in his cap instead of casque, 

A cap of Tyrol borrow'd from the hall, 

Arran2:ed the favor, and assumed the Prince. 



V.J A MEDLEY. 69 



Now, scarce three paces measured from the mound, 
We stumbled on a stationary voice, 
And ' Stand, who goes ?' ' Two from the palace,' I, 
* The second two : they wait,' he said, ' pass on ; 
His Highness wakes : ' and one, that clash'd in arms. 
By glimmering lanes and walls of canvas, led 
Threading the soldier-city, till we heard 
The drowsy folds of our great ensign shake 
From blazon'd lions o'er the imperial tent 
Whispers of war. 

Entering, the sudden light 10 

Dazed me half-blind : I stood and seem'd to hear, 
As in a poplar grove when a light wind wakes 
A lisping of the innumerous leaf and dies, 
Each hissing in his neighbor's ear; and then 
A strangled titter, out of which there brake 
On all sides, clamoring etiquette to death, 
Unmeasured mirth ; while now the two old kings 
Began to wag their baldness up and down. 
The fresh young captains flashed their glittering teeth, 
The huge bush-bearded Barons heaved and blew, 20 
And slain with laughter roll'd the gilded Squire. 

At length my Sire, his rough cheek wet with tears. 
Panted from weary sides, ' King, you are free ! 
We did but keep you surety for our son. 
If this be he, — or a draggled mawkin, thou, 



70 THE PRINCESS: [v. 

That tends her bristled grunters in the sludge : 
For I was drench'd with ooze, and torn with briers, 
More crumpled than a poppy from the sheath, 
And all one rag, disprinced from head to heel. 
Then some one sent beneath his vaulted palm so 

A whisper'd jest to some one near him, ' Look, 
He has been among his shadows.' ' Satan take 
The old women and their shadows ! ' (thus the King 
Roar'd) ' make yourself a man to fight with men. 
Go : Cyril told us all.' 

As boys that slink 
From ferule and the trespass-chiding eye, 
Away we stole, and transient in a trice 
From what was left of faded woman-slough 
To sheathing splendors and the golden scale 
Of harness, issued in the sun, that now 40 

Leapt from the dewy shoulders of the Earth, 
And hit the Northern hills. Here Cyril met us, 
A little shy at first, but by and by 
We twain, with mutual pardon ask'd and given 
For stroke and song, resolder'd peace, whereon 
Follow'd his tale. Amazed he fled away 
Thro' the dark land, and later in the night 
Had come on Psyche weeping : ' then we fell 
Into your father's hand, and there she lies. 
But will not speak, nor stir.' 

He show'd a tent so 

A stone-shot off : we enter'd in, and there 
Among piled arms and rough nccoutrements. 
Pitiful sight, wrapped in a soldier's cloak. 
Like some sweet sculpture draped from head to foot, 



V.J A MEDLEY. 71 

And push'd by rude hands from its pedestal, 
All her fair length upon the ground she lay : 
And at her head a follower of the camp, 
A charr'd and wrinkled piece of womanhood, 
Sat watching like a watcher by the dead. 

Then Florian knelt, and ' Come,' he whisper'd to 
her, 60 

* Lift up your head, sweet sister : lie not thus. 
What have you done but right ? you could not slay 
Me, nor your prince : look up : be comforted : 
Sweet is it to have done the thing one ought. 
When fall'n in darker ways.' And likewise I : 
' Be comforted : have I not lost her too. 
In whose least act abides the nameless charm 
That none has else for me .'' ' She heard, she moved. 
She moan'd, a folded voice ; and up she sat, 
And raised the cloak from brows as pale and smooth 
As those that mourn half-shrouded over death 71 

In deathless marble. ' Her,' she said, ' my friend — 
Parted from her — betray'd her cause and mine — 
Where shall I breathe ? why kept ye not your faith.'' 
O base and bad ! what comfort ? none for me ! ' 
To whom remorseful Cyril, ' Yet I pray 
Take comfort : live, dear lady, for your child ! ' 
At which she lifted up her voice and cried. 

' Ah me, my babe, my blossom, ah my child. 
My one sweet child, whom I shall see no more ! so 

For now will cruel Ida keep her back ; 
And either she will die from want of care, 



72 THE PRIxNCESS: [v. 

Or sicken with ill-usage, when they say 

The child is hers — for every little fault, 

The child is hers ; and they will beat my girl 

Remembering her mother : O my flower ! 

Or they will take her, they will make her hard, 

And she will pass me by in after-life 

With some cold reverence worse than were she dead. 

Ill mother that I was to leave her there, 90 

To lag behind, scared by the cry they made. 

The horror of the shame among them all : 

But I will go and sit beside the doors. 

And make a wild petition night and day, 

Until they hate to hear me like a wind 

Wailing forever, till they open to me, 

And lay my little blossom at my feet, 

My babe, my sweet Aglaia, my one child : 

And I will take her up and go my way. 

And satisfy my soul with kissing her : 100 

Ah ! what might that man not deserve of me, 

W^ho gave me back my child ? ' 'Be comforted,' 

Said Cyril, ' you shall have it : ' but again 

She veil'd her brows, and prone she sank, and so 

Like tender things that being caught feign death. 

Spoke not, nor stirr'd. 

By this a murmur ran 
Thro' all the camp and inward raced the scouts 
With rumor of Prince Arac "hard at hand. 
We left her by the woman, and without 
Found the gray kings at parle : and, ' Look, you,' 
cried 110 

My father, ' that our compact be fulfilled ; 



v.] A .MEDLEY. 73 

You have spoilt this child ; she laughs at you and man : 
She wrongs herself, her sex, and me, and him : 
But red-faced war has rods of steel and fire ; 
She yields, or war.' 

Then Gama turn'd to me : 
' We fear, indeed, you spent a stormy time 
With our strange girl : and yet they say that still 
You love her. Give us, then, your mind at large : 
How say you, war or not ? ' 

' Not war, if possible, 

king,' I said, ' lest from the abuse of war, 120 
The desecrated shrine, the trampled year. 

The smouldering homestead, and the household flower 

Torn from the lintel — all the common wrong — 

A smoke go up thro' which I loom to her 

Three times a monster : now she lightens scorn 

At him that mars her plan, but then would hate 

(And every voice she talk'd with ratify it. 

And every face she look'd on justify it) 

The general foe. More soluble is this knot, 

By gentleness than war. I want her love. iso 

What were I nigher this altho' we dash'd 

Your cities into shards with catapults, 

She would not love : — or brought her chain'd. a slave, 

The lifting of whose eyelash is my lord, 

Not ever would she love ; but brooding turn 

The book of scorn, till all my flitting chance 

Were caught within the record of her wrongs. 

And crush'd to death : and rather. Sire, than this 

1 would the old God of war himself were dead. 
Forgotten, rusting on his iron hills, 140 



74 THE PRINCESS: [v. 

Rotting on some wild shore with ribs of wreck, 
Or like an old-world mammoth bulk'd in ice, 
Not to be molten out.' 

And roughly spake 
My father, ' Tut, you know them not, the girls. 
Boy, when I hear you prate I almost think 
That idiot-legend credible. Look you. Sir ! 
Man is the hunter ; woman is his game : 
The sleek and shining creatures of the chase. 
We hunt them for the beauty of their skins ; 
They love us for it, and we ride them down. 150 

Wheedling and siding with them ! Out ! for shame ! 
Boy, there's no rose that's half so dear to them 
As he that does the thing they dare not do. 
Breathing and sounding beauteous battle, comes 
With the air of the trumpet round him, and leaps in 
Among the women, snares them by the score, 
Flatter'd and fluster'd, wins, tho' dash'd with death 
He reddens what he kisses : thus I won 
Your mother, a good mother, a good wife, 
Worth winning; but this firebrand — gentleness igo 
To such as her 1 if Cyril spake her true, 
To catch a dragon in a cherry-net, 
To trip a tigress with a gossamer, 
Were wisdom to it.' 

' Yea, but Sire,' I cried, 
' Wild natures need wise curbs. The soldier ? No : 
What dares not Ida do that she should prize 
The soldier ? I beheld her, when she rose 
The yesternight, and storming in extremes 
Stood for her cause, and flung defiance down 



v.] A MEDLEY. 75 

Gagelike to man, and had not shunn'd the death, 170 

Xo, not the soldier's : yet I hold her, king, 

True woman : but you clash them all in one, 

That have as many differences as we. 

The violet varies from the hly as far 

As oak from elm : one loves the soldier, one 

The silken priest of peace, one this, one that, 

And some unworthily ; their sinless faith, 

A maiden moon that sparkles on a sty, 

Glorifying clown and satyr ; whence they need 

More breadth of culture : is not Ida right? I80 

They worth it ? truer to the law within .'' 

Severer in the logic of a life ? 

Twice as magnetic to sweet influences 

Of earth and heaven ? and she of whom you speak, 

My mother, looks as whole as some serene 

Creation minted in the golden moods 

Of sovereign artists ; not a thought, a touch. 

But pure as lines of green that streak the white 

Of the first snowdrop's inner leaves ; I say. 

Not like the piebald miscellany, man, 190 

Bursts of great heart and slips in sensual mire, 

But whole and one : and take them all-in-all, 

Were we ourselves but half as good, as kind. 

As truthful, much that Ida claims as right 

Had ne'er been mooted, but as frankly theirs 

As dues of Nature. To our point : not war : 

Lest I lose all.' 

'Nay, nay, you spake but sense,' 
Said Gama. ' We remember love ourself 
In our sweet vouth ; we did not rate him then 



76 THE PRINCESS: [v. 

This red-hot iron to be shaped with blows. 200 

You talk almost like Ida : she can talk ; 

And there is something in it as you say : 

But you talk kindlier : we esteem you for it. 

He seems a gracious and a gallant Prince, 

I would he had our daughter : for the rest, 

Our own detention, why, the causes weigh'd, 

Fatherly fears — you used us courteously — 

We would do much to gratify your Prince — 

We pardon it ; and for your ingress here 

Upon the skirt and fringe of our fair land, 210 

You did but come as goblins in the night, 

Nor in the furrow broke the ploughman's head. 

Nor burnt the grange, nor buss'd the milking-maid. 

Nor robb'd the farmer of his bowl of cream : 

But let your Prince (our royal word upon it, 

He comes back safe) ride with us to our lines. 

And speak with Arac : Arac's word is thrice 

As ours with Ida : something may be done — 

I know not what — and ours shall see us friends. 

You, likewise, our late guests, if so you will, 220 

Follow us : w^ho knows ? we four may build some plan 

Foursquare to opposition.' 

Here he reach'd 
White hands of farewell to my sire, who growl'd 
An answer which, half-muffled in his beard, 
Let so much out as gave us leave to go. 

Then rode we with the old king across the lawns 
Beneath huge trees, a thousand rings of Spring 
In every bole, a song on every spray 



v.] A MEDLEY. i^ 

Of birds that piped their Valentines, and woke 

Desire in me to infuse my tale of love 230 

In the old king's ears, who promised help, and oozed 

All o'er with honey'd answer as we rode ; 

And blossom-fragrant slipt the heavy dews 

Gather'd by night and peace, with each light air 

On our mail'd heads : but other thoughts than Peace 

Burnt in us, when we saw the embattled squares. 

And squadrons of the Prince, trampling the flowers 

With clamor ; for among them rose a cry 

As if to greet the king ; they made a halt ; 

The horses yell'd ; they clash'd their arms ; the drum 

Beat; merrily blowing shrill'd the martial fife ; 241 

And in the blast and bray of the long horn 

And serpent-throated bugle, undulated 

The banner : anon to meet us lightly pranced 

Three captains out ; nor ever had I seen 

Such thews of men : the midmost and the highest 

Was Arac : all about his motion clung 

The shadow of his sister, as the beam 

Of the East, that play'd upon them, made them glance 

Like those three stars of the airy Giant's zone, 250 

That glitter burnish'd by the frosty dark ; 

And as the fiery Sirius alters hue. 

And bickers into red and emerald, shone 

Their morions, wash'd with morning, as they came. 

And I that prated peace, when first I heard 
War-music, felt the blind wildbeast of force, 
Whose home is in the sinews of a man, 
Stir in me as to strike : then took the king 



78 THE PRINCESS: [v. 

His three broad sons ; with now a wandering hand 

And now a pointed finger, told them all : 260 

A common light of smiles at our disguise 

Broke from their lips, and, ere the windy jest 

Had labor'd down within his ample lungs, 

The genial giant, Arac, roll'd himself 

Thrice in the saddle, then burst out in words. 

' Our land invaded, 'sdeath ! and he himself 
Your captive, yet my father wills not war : 
And, 'sdeath ! myself, what care I, war or no ? 
But then this question of your troth remains : 
And there's a downright honest meaning in her ; 270 
She flies too high, she flies too high ! and yet 
She ask'd but space and fair play for her scheme ; 
She prest and prest it on me — I myself, 
What know I of these things ? but, life and soul ! 
I thought her half right talking of her wrongs ; 
I say she flies too high, 'sdeath ! what of that ? 
I take her for the flower of womankind. 
And so I often told her, right or wrong. 
And, Prince, she can be sweet to those she loves, 
And, right or wrong, I care not : this is all, 280 

I stand upon her side : she made me swear it — 
'Sdeath — and with solemn rites by candle-light — 
Swear by St. something — I forget her name — 
Her that talk'd down the fifty wisest men ; 
She was a princess too ; and so I swore. 
Come, this is all ; she will not : waive your claim : 
If not, the foughten field, what else, at once 
Decides it; 'sdeath! against my father's will.' 



v.] A MEDLEY. 79 

I lagg'd in answer, loath to render up 
My precontract, and loath by brainless war 290 

To cleave the rift of difference deeper yet ; 
Till one of those two brothers, half aside 
And fingering at the hair about his lip, 
To prick us on to combat, ' Like to like ! 
The woman's garment hid the woman's heart.' 
A taunt that clench'd his purpose like a blow ! 
For fiery-short was Cyril's counter-scoff, 
And sharp I answer'd, touch'd upon the point 
Where idle boys are cowards to their shame, 
' Decide it here : why not ? we are three to three.' 300 

Then spake the third, ' But three to three ? no more ? 
No more, and in our noble sister's cause ? 
More, more, for honor : every captain waits 
Hungry for honor, angry for his king. 
More, more, some fifty on a side, that each 
May breathe himself, and quick ! by overthrow 
Of these or those, the question settled die.' 

' Yea,' answer'd I, 'for this w^ild wreath of air. 
This flake of rainbow flying on the highest 
Foam of men's deeds — this honor, if ye will. 310 

It needs must be for honor if at all : 
Since, what decision ? if we fail, we fail, 
And if we win, we fail : she would not keep 
Her compact.' ' 'Sdeath ! but we will send to her,' 
Said Arac, ' worthy reasons why she should 
Bide by this issue : let our missive thro'. 
And you shall have her answer by the word.' 



8o THE PRINCESS: [v. 

' Boys ! ' shriek'd the old king, but vainlier than a 
hen 
To her false daughters in the pool ; for none 
Regarded ; neither seem'd there more to say : 320 

Back rode we to my father's camp, and found 
He thrice had sent a herald to the gates, 
To learn if Ida yet would cede our claim, 
Or by denial flush her babbling wells 
With her own people's life : three times he went : 
The first, he blew and blew, but none appear'd : 
He batter'd at the doors ; none came : the next, 
An awful voice within had warn'd him thence : 
The third, and those eight daughters of the plough 
Came sallying thro' the gates, and caught his hair, 330 
And so belabor'd him on rib and cheek 
They made him wild : not less one glance he caught 
Thro' open doors of Ida station'd there 
Unshaken, clinging to her purpose, firm 
Tho' compass'd by two armies and the noise 
Of arms ; and standing like a stately Pine 
Set in a cataract on an island-crag. 
When storm is on the heights, and right and left 
Suck'd from the dark heart of the long hills roll 
The torrents, dash'd to the vale : and yet her will 340 
Bred will in me to overcome it or fall. 

But when I told the king that I was pledged 
To fight in tourney for my bride, he clash'd 
His iron palms together with a cry ; 
Himself would tilt it out among the lads : 
But overborne bv all his bearded lords 



v.] A MEDLEY. 8i 

With reasons drawn from age and state, perforce 

He yielded, wroth and red, with fierce demur : 

And many a bold knight started up in heat, 

And sware to combat for my claim till death. 350 

All on this side the palace ran the field 
Flat to the garden-wall : and likewise here, 
Above the garden's glowing blossom-belts, 
A column'd entry shone and marble stairs, 
And great bronze valves, emboss'd with Tomyris 
And what she did to Cyrus after fight. 
But now fast barr'd : so here upon the flat 
All that long morn the lists were hammer'd up, 
And all that morn the heralds to and fro. 
With message and defiance, went and came ; sco 

Last, Ida's answer, in a royal hand, 
But shaken here and there, and rolling words 
Oration-like. I kiss'd it and I read. 

* O brother, you have known the pangs we felt. 
What heats of indignation when we heard 
Of those that iron-cramp'd their women's feet ; 
Of lands in which at the altar the poor bride 
Gives her harsh groom for bridal-gift a scourge ; 
Of living hearts that crack within the fire 
Where smoulder their dead despots ; and of those, — 
Mothers, — that, all prophetic pity, fling 371 

Their pretty maids in the running flood, and swoops 
The vulture, beak and talon, at the heart 
Made for all noble motion : and I saw 
That equal baseness lived in sleeker times 



82 THE PRINCESS: [v. 

With smoother men : the old leaven leaven'd all : 

Millions of throats would bawl for civil rights, 

No woman named : therefore I set my face 

Against all men, and lived but for mine own. 

Far off from men I built a fold for them : sso 

I stored it full of rich memorial : 

I fenced it round with gallant institutes,. 

And biting laws to scare the beasts of pre}^, 

And prosper'd ; till a rout of saucy boys 

Brake on us at our books, and marr'd our peace, 

Mask'd like our maids, blustering I know not what 

Of insolence and love, some pretext held 

Of baby-troth, invalid, since my will 

Seal'd not the bond — the striplings ! — for their 

sport ! — 
I tamed my leopards : shall I not tame these ? 390 

Or you ? or I ? for since you think me touch'd 
In honor — what ? I would not aught of false — 
Is not our cause pure ? and whereas I know 
Your prowess, Arac, and what mother's blood 
You draw from, fight ; you failing, I abide 
What end soever : fail you will not. Still 
Take not his life : he risk'd it for my own ; 
His mother lives : yet whatsoe'er 3'ou do. 
Fight and fight well ; strike and strike home. O dear 
Brothers, the woman's Angel guards you, you 400 

The sole men to be mingled with our cause, 
The sole men we shall prize in the after-time. 
Your very armor hallow'd, and your statues 
Rear'd, sung to, when, this gad-fly brush'd aside, 
We plant a solid foot into the 1'ime, 



v.] A MEDLEY. 83 

And mould a generation strong to move 

With claim on claim from right to right, till she 

Whose name is yoked with children's, know herself ; 

And Knowledge in our own land make her free, 

And, ever following those two crowned twins, 410 

Commerce and Conquest, shower the fiery grain 

Of freedom broadcast over all that orbs 

Between the Northern and the Southern morn.' 

Then came a postscript dash'd across the rest. 
' See that there be no traitors in your camp : 
We seem a nest of traitors — none to trust 
Since our arms fail'd — this Egypt-plague of men ! 
Almost our maids were better at their homes. 
Than thus man-girdled here : indeed I think 
Our chiefest comfort is the little child 420 

Of one unworthy mother ; which she left : 
She shall not have it back : the child shall grow 
To prize the authentic mother of her mind. 
I took it for an hour in mine own bed 
This morning : there the tender orphan-hands 
Felt at my heart, and seem'd to charm from thence 
The wrath I nursed against the world : farewell.' 



"fe*^ 



I ceased : he said : ' Stubborn, but she may sit 
Upon a king's right hand in thunder-storms, 
And breed up warriors ! See now, tho' yourself 430 
Be dazzled by the wildfire Love to sloughs 
That swallow common sense, the spindling king, 
This Gama, swamp'd in lazy tolerance. 
When the man wants weight, the woman takes it up. 



84 THE PRINCESS: [v. 

And topples down the scales ; but this is fixt 

As are the roots of earth and base of all ; 

Man for the field and woman for the hearth : 

Man for the sword and for the needle she : 

Man with the head and woman with the heart : 

Man to command and woman to obey ; 440 

All else confusion. Look you ! the gray mare 

Is ill to live with, when her whinny shrills 

From tile to scullery, and her small goodman 

Shrinks in his arm-chair while the fires of Hell 

Mix with his hearth : but you — she's yet a colt — 

Take, break her : strongly groom'd and straitly curb'd 

She might not rank with those detestable 

That let the bantling scald at home, and brawl 

Their rights or wrongs like potherbs in the street. 

They say she's comely ; there's the fairer chance : 450 

/like her none the less for rating at her ! 

Besides, the woman wed is not as we, 

But suffers change of fame. A lusty brace 

Of twins may weed her of her folly. Boy, 

The bearing and the training of a child 

Is woman's wisdom.' 

Thus the hard old king : 
I took my leave, for it was nearly noon : 
I pored upon her letter which I held. 
And on the little clause, ' Take not his life : ' 
I mused on that wild morning in the woods, 4r)0 

And on the ' Follow, follow, thou shalt win : ' 
I thought on all the wrathful king had said, 
And how the strange betrothment was to end : 
Then I remember'd that burnt sorcerer's curse 



v.] A MEDLEY. 85 

That one should fight with shadows and should fall ; 

And like a flash the weird affection came : 

King, camp, and college turn'd to hollow shows ; 

I seem'd to move in old memorial tilts, 

And doing battle with forgotten ghosts, 

To dream myself the shadow of a dream : 470 

And ere I w^oke it was the point of noon, 

The lists were ready. Empanoplied and plumed 

We enter'd in, and waited, fifty there 

Opposed to fifty, till the trumpet blared 

At the barrier like a wild horn in a land 

Of echoes, and a moment, and once more 

The trumpet, and again : at which the storm 

Of galloping hoofs bare on the ridge of spears 

And riders front to front, until they closed 

In conflict with the crash of shivering points, 480 

And thunder. Yet it seem'd a dream, I dream'd 

Of fighting. On his haunches rose the steed, 

And into fiery splinters leapt the lance, 

And out of stricken helmets sprang the fire. 

Part sat like rocks : part reel'd but kept their seats : 

Part roird on the earth and rose again and drew : 

Part stumbled mixt with floundering horses. Down 

From those two bulks at Arac's side, and down 

From Arac's arm, as from a giant's flail. 

The large blows rain'd, as here and everywhere 490 

He rode the mellay, lord of the ringing lists, 

And all the plain, — brand, mace, and shaft, and shield 

Shock'd, like an iron-clanging anvil bang'd 

With hammers ; till I thought, can this be he 

From Gama's dwarfish loins ? if this be so, 



86 THE PRINCESS: [v. 

The mother makes us most — and in my dream 

I glanced aside, and saw the palace-front 

Alive with fluttering scarfs and ladies' eyes, 

And highest, among the statues, statuelike, 

Between a cymbal'd Miriam and a Jael, 500 

With Psyche's babe, was Ida watching us, 

A single band of gold about her hair. 

Like a Saint's glory up in heaven : but she 

No saint — inexorable — no tenderness — 

Too hard, too cruel : yet she sees me fight, 

Yea, let her see me fall ! with that I drave 

Among the thickest and bore down a Prince, 

And Cyril, one. Yea, let me make my dream 

All that I would. But that large-moulded man. 

His visage all agrin as at a wake, 510 

Made at me thro' the press, and, staggering back 

With stroke on stroke the horse and horseman, came 

As comes a pillar of electric cloud. 

Flaying the roofs and sucking up the drains, 

And shadowing down the champaign till it strikes 

On a wood, and takes, and breaks, and cracks, and 

splits, 
And twists the grain with such a roar that Earth 
Reels, and the herdsmen cry ; for everything 
Gave way before him : only Florian, he 
That loved me closer than his own right eye, rr2o 

Thrust in between ; but Arac rode him down : 
And Cyril seeing it, push'd against the Prince, 
With Psyche's color round his helmet, tough, 
Strong, supple, sinew-corded, apt at arms ; 
But tougher, heavier, stronger, he that smote 



v.] A MEDLEY. 87 

And threw him : last I spurr'd ; I felt my veins 
Stretch with fierce heat ; a moment hand to hand, 
And sword to sword, and horse to horse we hung, 
Till I struck out and shouted ; the blade glanced ; 
I did but shear a feather, and dream and truth 530 

Flow'd from me ; darkness closed me ; and I fell. 



88 THE PRINCESS: [vi. 



VI. 

Home they brought her warrior dead ; 

She nor swoon'd, nor utter'd cry: 
All her maidens, watching, said, 

' She must weep or she will die.' 

They then praised him, soft and low, 
Call'd him worthy to be loved, 

Truest friend and noblest foe ; 

Yet she neither spoke nor moved. 

Stole a maiden from her place, 

Lightly to the warrior stept, 
Took the face-cloth from the face ; 

Yet she neither moved nor wept. 

Rose a nurse of ninety years, 

Set his child upon her knee — 
Like summer tempest came her tears — 

' Sweet my child, I live for thee.' 

My dream had never died or lived again. 
As in some mystic middle state I lay ; 
Seeing I saw not, hearing not I heard : 
Tho', if I saw not, yet they told me all 
So often that I speak as having seen. 

For so it seem'd, or so they said to me, 
That all things grew more tragic and more strange ; 
That when our side was vanquish 'd and my cause 
Forever lost, there went up a great cry, 



VI.] A MEDLEY. 89 

The Prince is slain. My father heard and ran 10 

In on the lists, and there unlaced my casque 
And grovell'd on my body, and after him 
Came Psyche, sorrowing for Aglaia. 

But high upon the palace Ida stood 
With Psyche's babe in arm : there on roofs 
Like that great dame of Lapidoth she sang : 

'Our enemies have fall'n, have fall'n : the seed, 
The little seed they laugh'd at in the dark, 
Has risen and cleft the soil, and grown a bulk 
Of spanless girth, that lays on every side 20 

A thousand arms and rushes to the Sun. 

' Our enemies have fall'n, have fall'n : they came ; 
The leaves were wet with women's tears: they heard 
A noise of songs they would not understand : 
They mark'd it with the red cross to the fall. 
And would have strown it, and are fall'n themselves. 

' Our enemies have fall'n, have fall'n: they came, 
The woodmen with their axes : lo the tree ! 
But we will make it fagots for the hearth. 
And shape it plank and beam for roof and floor, 30 

And boats and bridges for the use of men. 

' Our enemies have fall'n, have fall'n : they struck; 
With their own blows they hurt themselves, nor knew 
There dwelt an iron nature in the grain : 
The glittering axe was broken in their arms. 
Their arms were shatter'd to the shoulder-blade. 

' Our enemies have fall'n, but this shall grow 
A night of Summer from the heat, a breath 



90 THE PRINCESS: [vi. 

Of Autumn, dropping fruits of power; and roll'd 

With music in the growing breeze of Time, ^0 

The tops shall strike from star to star, the fangs 

Shall move the stony bases of the world.' 

' And now, O maids, behold our sanctuary 
Is violate, our laws broken : fear w^e not 
To break them more in their behoof, w^hose arms 
Champion'd our cause and won it with a day 
Blanch'd in our annals, and perpetual feast. 
When dames and heroines of the golden year 
Shall strip a hundred hollows bare of Spring, 
To rain an April of ovation round 50 

Their statues, borne aloft, the three : but come. 
We will be liberal, since our rights are won. 
Let them not lie in the tents with coarse mankind, 
111 nurses ; but descend, and proffer these 
The brethren of our blood and cause, that there 
Lie bruised and maim'd, the tender ministries 
Of female hands and hospitality.' 

She spoke, and with the babe yet in her arms, 
Descending, burst the great bronze valves, and led 
A hundred maids in train across the park, co 

Some cowl'd, and some bare-headed, on they came. 
Their feet in flowers, her loveliest : by them went 
The enamor'd air sighing, and on their curls 
From the high tree the blossom wavering fell, 
And over them the tremulous isles of light 
Slided, they moving under shade : but Blanche 
At distance followed ; so they came : anon 



VI.] A MEDLEY. 91 

Thro" open field into the lists they wound 

Timorously ; and as the leader of the herd 

That holds a stately fretwork to the Sun, 70 

And follow'd up by a hundred airy does, 

Steps with a tender foot, light as on air, 

The lovely, lordly creature floated on 

To' where her wounded brethren lay ; there stay'd ; 

Knelt on one knee, — the child on one, — and prest 

Their hands, and call'd them dear deliverers, 

And happy warriors, and immortal names, 

And said, ' You shall not lie in the tents, but here, 

And nursed by those for whom you fought, and served 

With female hands and hospitality.' so 

Then, whether moved by this, or was it chance, 
She past my way. Up started from my side 
The old lion, glaring with his whelpless eye. 
Silent ; but when she saw me lying stark, 
Dishelm'd and mute, and motionlessly pale, 
Cold ev'n to her, she sigh'd ; and when she saw 
The haggard father's face and reverend beard 
Of grisly twine, all dabbled with the blood 
Of his own son, shudder'd, a twitch of pain 
Tortured her mouth, and o'er her forehead past 90 

A shadow, and her hue changed, and she said : 
' He saved my life : my brother slew him for it.' 
Xo more : at which the king in bitter scorn 
Drew from my neck the painting and the tress 
And held them up : she saw them, and a day 
Rose from the distance on her memory. 
When the good Queen, her mother, shore the tress 



92 THE PRINCESS: [vi. 

With kisses, ere the days of Lady Blanche : 

And then once more she look'd at my pale face : 

Till understanding all the foolish work loo 

Of Fancy, and the bitter close of all, 

Her iron will was broken in her mind ; 

Her noble heart was molten in her breast , 

She bow'd, she set the child on the earth ; she laid 

A feeling finger on my brows, and, presently, 

' O Sire,' she said, ' he lives : he is not dead : 

O let me have him with my brethren here 

In our own palace : we will tend on him 

Like one of these ; if so, by any means. 

To lighten this great clog of thanks, that make no 

Our progress falter to the woman's goal.' 

She said : but at the happy word ' he lives,' 
My father stoop'd, refather'd o'er my wounds. 
So those two foes above my fallen life. 
With brow to brow like night and evening mixt 
Their dark and gray, while Psyche ever stole 
A little nearer, till the babe that by us, 
Half-lapt in glowing gauze and golden brede, 
Lay like a new-fall'n meteor on the grass, 
Uncared for, spied its mother, and began 120 

A blind and babbling laughter, and to dance 
Its body, and reach its fatling innocent arms 
And lazy lingering fingers. She the appeal 
Brook'd not, but clamoring out, 'Mine — mine — not 

yours. 
It is not yours, but mine : give me the child,' 
Ceased all on tremble : piteous was the cry : 



VI.] A MEDLEY. 93 

So stood the unhappy mother open-mouth'd, 

And turn'd each face her way : wan was her cheek 

With hollow watch, her blooming mantle torn, 

Red grief and mother's hunger in her eye, 130 

And down dead-heavy sank her curls, and half 

The sacred mother's bosom, panting, burst 

The laces toward her babe ; but she nor cared 

Nor knew it, clamoring on, till Ida heard, 

Look'd up, and rising slowly from me, stood 

Erect and silent, striking with her glance 

The mother, me, the child ; but he that lay 

Beside us, Cyril, batter'd as he was, 

Trail'd himself up on one knee : then he drew 

Her robe to meet his lips, and down she look"d i40 

At the arm'd man sideways, pitying, as it seem'd, 

Or self-involved ; but when she learnt his face. 

Remembering his ill-omen'd song, arose 

Once more thro' all her height, and o'er him grew 

Tall as a figure lengthen'd on the sand 

When the tide ebbs in sunshine, and he said : 

' O fair and strong and terrible ! Lioness 
That with your long locks play the Lion's mane ! 
But Love and Nature, these are two more terrible 
And stronger. See, your foot is on our necks, 150 

We vanquish'd, you the Victor of your will. 
What would you more ? give her the child ! remain 
Orb'd in your isolation : he is dead, 
Or all as dead : henceforth we let you be : 
Win you the hearts of women ; and beware 
Lest, where you seek the common love of these, 



94 THE PRINCESS: [vi. 

The common hate with the revolving wheel 

Should drag you down, and some great Nemesis 

Break from a darken 'd future, crown 'd with fire, 

And tread you out forever : but howsoever i60 

Fix'd in yourself, never in your own arms 

To hold your own, deny not hers to her, 

Give her the child ! O if, I say, you keep 

One pulse that beats true woman, if you loved 

The breast that fed or arm that dandled you, 

Or own one part of sense not flint to prayer. 

Give her the child ! or if you scorn to lay it, 

Yourself, in hands so lately claspt with yours. 

Or speak to her, your dearest, her one fault 

The tenderness, not yours, that could not kill, no 

Give me it : / will give it her.' 

He said: 
At first her eye with slow dilation roll'd 
Dry flame, she listening ; after sank and sank. 
And, into mournful twilight mellowing, dwelt 
Full on the child ; she took it : ' Pretty bud ! 
Lily of the vale ! half-open'd bell of the woods ! 
Sole comfort of my dark hour, when a world 
Of traitorous friend and broken system made 
No purple in the distance, mystery, 
Pledge of a love not to be mine, farewell ; iso 

These men are hard upon us as of old, 
We two must part : and yet how fain was I 
To dream thy cause embraced in mine, to think 
I might be something to thee, when I felt 
Thy helpless warmth about my barren breast 
In the dead prime : but may thy mother prove 



VI.] A MEDLEY. 95 

As true to thee as false, false, false to me ! 
And, if thou needs must bear the yoke, I wish it 
Gentle as freedom ' — here she kiss'd it : then — 
'AH good go with thee ! take it, Sir,' and so lOO 

Laid the soft babe in his hard-mailed hands, 
Who turn'd half-round to Psyche as she sprang 
To meet it, with an eye that swum in thanks ; 
Then felt it sound and whole from head to foot, 
And hugg'd and never hugg'd it close enough, 
And in her hunger mouth'd and mumbled it, 
And hid her bosom with it ; after that 
Put on more calm and added suppliantly ; 

' We two were friends : I go to mine own land 
Forever : find some other : as for me 200 

I scarce am fit for your great plans : yet speak to me. 
Say one soft word and let me part forgiven.' 

But Ida spoke not, rapt upon the child. 
Then Arac. ' Ida — 'sdeath ! you blame the man ; 
You wrong yourselves — the woman is so hard 
Upon the woman. Come, a grace to me ! 
I am your warrior : I and mine have fought 
Your battle : kiss her ; take her hand, she weeps ; 
'Sdeath! I would sooner fight thrice o'er than see it.' 

But Ida spoke not, gazing on the ground, 210 

And reddening in the furrows of his chin, 
And moved beyond his custom, Gama said : 

' I've heard that there is iron in the blood. 
And I believe it. Not one word ? not one ? 



96 THE PRINCESS: [vi. 

Whence drew you this steel temper ? not from me, 

Not from your mother now a saint with saints. 

She said you had a heart — I heard her say it — 

" Our Ida has a heart " — just ere she died — 

" But see that some one with authority 

Be near her still," and I — I sought for one — 220 

All people said she had authority — 

The Lady Blanche : much profit ! Not one word ; 

No ! tho' your father sues : see how you stand 

Stiff as Lot's wife, and all the good knights maim'd, 

I trust that there is no one hurt to death. 

For your wild whim : and was it then for this. 

Was it for this we gave our palace up. 

Where we withdrew from summer heats and state, 

And had our wine and chess beneath the planes. 

And many a pleasant hour with her that's gone, 230 

Ere you were born to vex us ? Is it kind ? 

Speak to her I say : is this not she of whom. 

When first she came, all flush'd you said to me 

Now had you got a friend of your own age. 

Now could you share your thought ; now should men 

see 
Two women faster welded in one love 
Than pairs of wedlock ; she you walk'd with, she 
You talk'd with, whole nights long, up in the tower. 
Of sine and arc, spheroid and azimuth. 
And right ascension, Heaven knows what; and now 240 
A word, but one, one little kindly word, 
Not one to spare her : out upon you, flint ! 
You love nor her, nor me, nor any ; nay. 
You shame your mother's judgment too. Not one ? 



VI.] A MEDLEY. 97 

You will not ? well — no heart have you, or such 

As fancies like the vermin in a nut 

Have fretted all to dust and bitterness.' 

So said the small king moved beyond his wont. 

But Ida stood nor spoke, drain'd of her force 
By many a varying influence and so long. 250 

Down thro" her limbs a drooping languor wept : 
Her head a little bent ; and on her mouth 
A doubtful smile dwelt like a clouded moon 
In a still water : then brake out my sire, 
Lifting his grim head from my wounds. ' O you, 
Woman, whom we thought woman even now. 
And were half fool'd to let you tend our son, 
Because he might have wish'd it — but we see 
The accomplice of your madness unforgiven. 
And think that you might mix his draught with 
death, 260 

When your skies change again : the rougher hand 
Is safer: on to the tents: take up the Prince.' 

He rose, and while each ear was prick'd to attend 
A tempest, thro' the cloud that dimm'd her broke 
A genial warmth and light once more, and shone 
Thro' glittering drops on her sad friend. 

' Come hither, 
O Psyche,' she cried out, ' embrace me, come. 
Quick while I melt ; make reconcilement sure 
With one that cannot keep her mind an hour : 
Come to the hollow heart they slander so ! 270 

Kiss and be friends, like children being chid ! 



98 THE PRINCESS: « [vi. 

/ seem no more : / want forgiveness too : 
I should have had to do with none but maids, 
That have no Hnks with men. Ah false but dear, 
Dear traitor, too much loved, why ? — why ? — Yet 

see, 
Before these kings we embrace you yet once more 
With all forgiveness, all oblivion. 
And trust, not love, you less. 

And now, O Sire, 
Grant me your son, to nurse, to wait upon him, 
Like mine own brother. For my debt to him, 280 

This nightmare weight of gratitude, I know it ; 
Taunt me no more : yourself and yours shall have 
Free adit ; we will scatter all our maids 
Till happier times, each to her proper hearth : 
What use to keep them here now.? grant my prayer. 
Help, father, brother, help ; speak to the king : 
Thaw this male nature to some touch of that 
Which kills me with myself, and drags me down 
From my fixt height to mob me up with all 
The soft and milky rabble of womankind, 290 

Poor weakling ev'n as they are.' 

Passionate tears 
FoUow'd : the king replied not : Cyril said : 
' Your brother, Lady, — Florian, — ask for him 
Of your great head — for he is wounded too — 
That you may tend upon him with the prince.' 
' Ay so,' said Ida, with a bitter smile, 
' Our laws are broken : let him enter too.' 
Then Violet, she that sang the mournful song, 
And had a cousin tumbled on the plain. 



VI.] A MEDLEY 99 

Petition'd too for him. ' Ay so,' she said, 300 

' I stagger in the stream : I cannot keep 

My heart an eddy from the brawling hour : 

We break Our laws with ease, but let it be.' 

* Ay SO .'' ' said Blanche : ' Amazed am 1 to hear 

Your Highness : but your Highness breaks with ease 

The law your Highness did not make : 'twas I. 

I had been wedded wife, I knew mankind. 

And block'd them out; but these men came to woo 

Your Highness — verily I think to win.' 

So she, and turn'd askance a wintry eye : 310 

But Ida with a voice, that like a bell 
Toll'd by an earthquake in a trembling tower. 
Rang ruin, answer'd full of grief and scorn : 

' Fling our doors wide ! all, ail, not one, but all, 
Not only he, but by my mother's soul. 
Whatever man lies wounded, friend or foe, 
Shall enter, if he will. Let our girls fiit. 
Till the storm die ! but had you stood by us, 
The roar that breaks the Pharos from his base 
Had left us rock. She fain would sting us too, 320 

But shall not. Pass, and mingle with your likes. 
We brook no further insult but are gone.' 

She turn'd ; the very nape of her white neck 
Was rosed with indignation : but the Prince 
Her brother came ; the king her father charm 'd 
Her wounded soul with words : nor did mine own 
Refuse her proffer, lastly gave his hand. 



loo THE PRINCESS: [vi. 

Then as they lifted up, dead weights, and bare 
Straight to the doors : to them the doors gave way 
Groaning, and in the Vestal entry shriek'd 330 

The virgin marble under iron heels : 
And on they moved and gain'd the hall, and there 
Rested : but great the crush was, and each base, 
To left and right, of those tall columns drown'd 
In silken fluctuation and the swarm 
Of female whisperers : at the futher end 
Was Ida by the throne, the two great cats 
Close by her, like supporters on a shield, 
Bow-back'd with fear : but in the centre stood 
The common men with rolling eyes ; amazed 340 

They glared upon the women, and aghast 
The women stared at these, all silent, save 
When armor clash 'd or jingled, while the day. 
Descending, struck athwart the hall, and shot 
A flying splendor out of brass and steel, 
That o'er the statues leapt from head to head, 
Now fired an angry Pallas on the helm. 
Now set a wrathful Dian's moon on flame. 
And now and then an echo started up. 
And shuddering fled from room to room, and died 350 
Of fright in far apartments. 

Then the voice 
Of Ida sounded, issuing ordinance : 
And me they bore up the broad stairs, and thro' 
The long-laid galleries past a hundred doors 
To one deep chamber shut from sound, and due 
To languid limbs and sickness ; left me in it ; 
And others otherwhere they laid ; and all 



VI.] A MEDLEY. loi 

That afternoon a sound arose of hoof 

And chariot, many a maiden passing home 

Till happier times ; but some were left of those 360 

Held sagest, and the great lords out and in, 

From those two hosts that lay beside the walls, 

Walk'd at their will, and everything was changed. 



102 THE PRINCESS: [vii. 



VII. 

Ask me no more: the moon may draw the sea; 

The cloud may stoop from heaven and take the shape, 
With fold to fold, of mountain or of cape; 

But O too fond, when have I answered thee? 
Ask me no more 

Ask me no more: what answer should I give? 
I love not hollow cheek or faded eye: 
Yet, O my friend, I will not have thee die! 

Ask me no more, lest I should bid thee live ; 
Ask me no more. 

Ask me no more: thy fate and mine are seal'd: 
I strove against the stream and all in vain : 
Let the great river take me to the main: 

No more, dear love, for at a touch I yield; 
Ask me no more. 

So was their sanctuary violated, 

So their fair college turn'd to hospital ; 

At first with all confusion : by and by 

Sweet order lived again with other laws : 

A kindlier influence reign'd ; and everywhere 

Low voices with the ministering hand 

Hung round the sick : the maidens came, they talk'd, 

They sang, they read : till she not fair, began 

To gather light, and she that was, became 

Her former beauty treble ; and to and fro lo 

With books, with flowers, with Angel offices, 

Like creatures native unto gracious act. 

And in their own clear element, they moved. 



VII.] A MEDLEY. 103 

But sadness oiv the soul of Ida fell, 
And hatred of her weakness, blent with shame. 
Old studies f ail'd : seldom she spoke ; but oft 
Clomb to the roofs, and gazed alone for hours 
On that disastrous leaguer, swarms of men 
Darkening her female field : void was her use ; 
And she as one that climbs a peak to gaze 20 

O'er land and main, and sees a great black cloud 
Drag inward from the deeps, a wall of night. 
Blot out the slope of sea from verge to shore. 
And suck the blinding splendor from the sand. 
And quenching lake by lake and tarn by tarn. 
Expunge the w^orld : so fared she gazing there ; 
So blacken 'd all her world in secret, blank 
And waste it seem'd and vain ; till down she came. 
And found fair peace once more among the sick. 

And twilight dawn'd ; and morn by morn the lark so 
Shot up and shrill'd in flickering gyres, but I 
Lay silent in the muffled cage of life : 
And twilight gloom 'd ; and broader-grown the bowers 
Drew the great night into themselves, and Heaven, 
Star after star, arose and fell ; but I, 
Deeper than those weird doubts could reach me, lay 
Quite sunder'd from the moving Universe, 
Nor knew what eye was on me, nor the hand 
That nursed me, more than infants in their sleep. 

But Psyche tended Florian : with her oft, 40 

Melissa came ; for Blanche had gone, but left 
Her child among us. willing she should keep 



I04 THE PRIxNCESS: [vii. 

Court-favor : here and there the small bright head, 
A light of healing, glanced about the couch, 
Or thro' the parted silks the tender face 
Peep'd, shining in upon the wounded man ^ 
With blush and smile, a medicine in themselves 
To wile the length from languorous hours, and draw 
The sting from pain ; nor seem'd it strange that soon 
He rose up whole, and those fair charities so 

Join'd at her side ; nor stranger seem'd that hearts 
So gentle, so employ'd, should close in love, 
Than when two dewdrops on the petal shake 
To the same sweet air, and tremble deeper down, 
And slip at once all-fragrant into one. 

Less prosperously the second suit obtain'd 
At first with Psyche. Not tho' Blanche had sworn 
That after that dark night among the fields, 
She needs must wed him for her own good name ; 
Not tho' he built upon the babe restored ; 60 

Nor tho' she liked him, yielded she, but fear'd 
To incense the Head once more ; till on a day 
When Cyril pleaded, Ida came behind 
Seen but of Psyche : on her foot she hung 
A moment, and she heard, at which her face 
A little fiush'd, and she past on ; but each 
Assumed from thence a half-consent involved 
In stillness, plighted troth, and were at peace. 

Nor only these : Love in the sacred halls 
Held carnival at will, and flying struck 70 

With showers of random sweet on maid and man. 



VII.] A iAIEDLEY. 105 

Nor did her father cease to press my claim, 
Nor did mine own now reconciled ; nor yet 
Did those twin brothers, risen again and whole ; 
Nor Arac, satiate with his victory. 

But I lay still, and with me oft she sat : 
Then came a change ; for sometimes I would catch 
Her hand in wild delirium, gripe it hard, 
And fling it like a viper off, and shriek, 
' You are not Ida ; ' clasp it once again, so 

And call her Ida, tho' I knew her not, 
And call her sweet, as if in irony. 
And call her hard and cold which seem'd a truth : 
And still she fear'd that I should lose my mind, 
And often she believed that I should die : 
Till out of long frustration of her care. 
And pensive tendance in the all-weary noons. 
And watches in the dead, the dark, when clocks 
Throbb'd thunder thro' the palace floors, or call'd 
On flying Time from all their silver tongues — 90 

And out of memories of her kindlier days. 
And sidelong glances at my father's grief, 
.And at the happy lovers heart in heart — 
And out of hauntings of my spoken love, 
And lonely listenings to my mutter'd dream. 
And often feeling of the helpless hands, 
And wordless broodings on the wasted cheek — 
From all a closer interest flourish'd up, 
Tenderness touch by touch, and last, to these, 
Love, like an Alpine harebell hung with tears 100 

By some cold morning glacier ; frail at first 



io6 THE PRINCESS: [vii. 

And feeble, all unconscious of itself. 
But such as gather'd color day by day. 



Last I woke sane, but well-nigh close to death 
For weakness : it was evening : silent light 
Slept on the painted walls, wherein were wTought 
Two grand designs ; for on one side arose 
The Avomen up in wild revolt, and storm'd 
At the Oppian law. Titanic shapes, they cramm'd 
The forum, and half-crush'd among the rest no 

A dwarf-like Cato cower'd. On the other side 
Hortensia spoke against the tax ; behind 
A train of dames : by axe and eagle sat. 
With all their foreheads draw^n in Roman scowls, 
And half the wolf's-milk curdled in their veins. 
The fierce triumvirs ; and before them paused 
Hortensia, pleading : angry was her face. 

I saw the forms : I knew not where I was : 
They did but look like hollow shows ; nor more 
Sweet Ida : palm to palm she sat : the dew 120 

Dwelt in her eyes, and softer all her shape 
And rounder seem'd : I moved : I sigh'd : a touch 
Came round my wrist, and tears upon my hand : 
Then all for languor and self-pity ran 
Mine down my face, and with what life I had, 
And like a flower that cannot all unfold. 
So drench'd it is with tempest, to the sun, 
Yet, as it may, turns toward him, I on her 
Fixt my faint eyes, and utter'd whisperingly : 



VII.] A MEDLEY 107 

' If you be, what I think you, some sweet dream, 130 
I would but ask you to fulfil yourself : 
But if you be that Ida whom I knew, 
I ask you nothing : only, if a dream, 
Sweet dream, be perfect. I shall die to-night. 
Stoop down and seem to kiss me ere I die.' 

I could no more, but lay like one in trance, 
That hears his burial talk'd of by his friends. 
And cannot speak, nor move, nor make one sign. 
But lies and dreads his doom. She turn'd ; she 

paused ; 
She stooped ; and out of languor leapt a cry ; uu 

Leapt fiery Passion from the brinks of death ; 
And I believed that in the living world 
My spirit closed with Ida's at the lips ; 
Till back I fell, and from mine arms she rose 
Glowing all over noble shame ; and all 
Her falser self slipt from her like a robe, 
And left her woman, lovelier in her mood 
Than in her mould that other, when she came 
From barren deeps to conquer all with love : 
And down the streaming crystal dropt ; and she 150 
■ Far-fleeted by the purple island-sides. 
Naked, a double light in air and wave. 
To meet her Graces, where they deck'd her out 
For worship without end ; nor end of mine. 
Stateliest, for thee ! but mute she glided forth, 
Nor glanced behind her, and I sank and slept, 
Fill'd thro' and thro' with Love, a happy sleep. 



io8 THE PRINCESS: [vii. 

Deep in the night I woke : she, near me, held 
A volume of the Poets of her land : 
There to herself, all in low tones, she read. i60 

'Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white; 
Nor waves the cypress in the palace walk ; 
Nor winks the gold fin in the porphyry font : 
The fire-fly wakens : waken thou with me. 

Now droops the milk-white peacock like a ghost, 
And like a ghost she glimmers on to me. 

Now lies the Earth all Danae to the stars, 
And all thy heart lies open unto me. 

Now slides the silent meteor on, and leaves 
A shining furrow, as thy thoughts in me. 170 

Now folds the lily all her sweetness up. 
And slips into the bosom of the lake : 
So fold thyself, my dearest, thou, and slip 
Into my bosom and be lost in me.' 

I heard her turn the page ; she found a small 
Sweet Idyl, and once more, as low, she read : 

' Come down, O maid, from yonder mountain height : 
What pleasure lives in height (the shepherd sang) 
In height and cold, the splendor of the hills ? 
But cease to move -so near the Heavens, and cease 180 

To glide a sunbeam by the blasted Pine, 
To sit a star upon the sparkling spire ; 
And come, for Love is of the valley, come, 
For Love is of the valley, come thou down 
And find him ; by the happy threshold, he. 
Or hand in hand with Plenty in the maize. 



VII.] A MEDLEY. 109 

Or red with spirted purple of the vats, 

Or foxlike in the vine ; nor cares to v^'alk 

With Death and Morning on the silver horns, 

Nor wilt, thou snare him in the white ravine, 190 

Nor find him dropt upon the firths of ice, 

That huddling slant in furrow-cloven falls 

To roll the torrent out of dusky doors : 

But follow ; let the torrent dance thee down 

To find him in the valley ; let the wild 

Lean-headed Eagles yelp alone, and leave 

The monstrous ledges there to slope, and spill 

Their thousand wreaths of dangling water-smoke, 

That like a broken purpose waste in air : 

So waste not thou ; but come ; for all the vales 200 

Await thee ; azure pillars of the hearth 

Arise to thee ; the children call, and I 

Thy shepherd pipe, and sweet is every sound. 

Sweeter thy voice, but every sound is sweet ; 

Myriads of rivulets hurrying thro' the lawn. 

The moan of doves in immemorial elms, 

And murmuring of innumerable bees.' 

So she low-toned : while with shut eyes I lay 
Listening ; then looked. Pale was the perfect face ; 
The bosom with long sighs labor'd ; and meek 210 

Seem'd the full lips, and mild the luminous eyes. 
And the voice trembled and the hand. She said, 
Brokenl}^ that she knew it, she had fail'd 
In sweet humility ; had fail'd in all ; 
That all her labor was but as a block 
Left in the quarry; but she still were loth, 
She still were loth to yield herself to one 
That wholly scorn'd to help their equal rights 
Against the sons of men, and barbarous laws. 



no THE PRINCESS: [vii. 

She pray'd me not to judge their cause from her 220 

That wrong'd it, sought far less for truth than power 

In knowledge : something wild within her breast, 

A greater than all knowledge, beat her down. 

And she had nursed me there from week to week : 

Much had she learnt in little time. In part 

It was ill counsel had misled the girl 

To vex true hearts : yet was she but a girl — • 

' Ah fool, and made myself a Queen of farce ! 

When comes another such ? never, I think. 

Till the Sun drop dead from the signs.' 

Her voice 230 
Choked, and her forehead sank upon her hands, 
And her great heart thro' all the faultful Past 
Went sorrowing in a pause I dared not break ; 
Till notice of a change in the dark world 
Was lispt about the acacias, and a bird. 
That early woke to feed her little ones. 
Sent from a dewy breast a cry for light : 
She moved, and at her feet the volume fell. 

' Blame not thyself too much,' I said, ' nor blame 
Too much the sons of men and barbarous laws ; 240 
These were the rough ways of the world till now. 
Henceforth thou hast a helper, me, that know 
The woman's cause is man's : they rise or sink 
Together, dwarf'd or godlike, bond or free : 
For she that out of Lethe scales with man 
The shining steps of Nature, shares with man 
His nights, his days, moves with him to one goal, 
Stays all the fair young planet in her hands — 



VII.] A MEDLEY. in 

If she be small, slight-natured, miserable, 

How shall men grow ? but work no more alone ! 250 

Our place is much : as far as in us lies 

We two will serve them both in aiding her — 

Will clear away the parasitic forms 

That seem to keep her up but drag her down — 

Will leave her space to burgeon out of all 

Within her — let her make herself her own 

To give or keep, to live and learn and be 

All that not harms distinctive womanhood. 

For woman is not undevelopt man, 

But diverse : could we make her as the man, 2G0 

Sweet love were slain : his dearest bond is this, 

Not like to like, but like in difference. 

Yet in the long years liker must they grow ; 

The man be more of woman, she of man ; 

He gain in sweetness and in moral height. 

Nor lose the wrestling thews that throw the world ; 

She mental breadth, nor fail in childward care, 

Nor lose the childlike in the larger mind ; 

Till at the last she set herself to man, 

Like perfect music unto noble words ; 270 

And so these twain, upon the skirts of Time, 

Sit side by side, full-summ'd in all their powers. 

Dispensing harvest, sowing the To-be, 

Self-reverent each and reverencino^ each, 

Distinct in individualities. 

But like each other ev'n as those who love. 

Then comes the statelier Eden back to men : 

Then reign the world's great bridals, chaste and calm : 

Then springs the crowning race of humankind. 



112 THE PRINCESS [vil. 

May these things be ! ' 

Sighing she spoke, ' I fear 280 
They will not.' 

' Dear, but let us type them now 
In our own lives, and this proud watchword rest 
Of equal ; seeing either sex alone 
Is half itself, and in true marriage lies 
Nor equal, nor unequal : each fulfils 
Defect in each, and always thought in thought, 
Purpose in purpose, will in will, they grow, 
The single pure and perfect animal. 
The two-cell'd heart beating, with one full stroke. 
Life.' 

And again sighing she spoke : ' A dream 290 
That once was mine ! what woman taught you this ? ' 

* Alone,' I said, 'from earlier than I know. 
Immersed in rich foreshadowings of tlie world, 
I loved the woman : he, that doth not, lives 
A drowning life, besotted in sweet self, 
Or pines in sad experience worse than death, 
Or keeps his wing'd affections dipt with crime : 
Yet was there one thro' whom I loved her, one 
Not learned, save in gracious household ways, 
Not perfect, nay, but full of tender wants, 300 

No Angel, but a dearer being, all dipt 
In Angel instincts, breathing Paradise, 
Interpreter between the Gods and men, 
Who look'd all native to her place, and yet 
On tiptoe seem'd to touch upon a sphere 
Too gross to tread, and all male minds perforce 



VII.] A MEDLEY. 113 

Sway'd to her from their orbits as they moved, 

And girdled her with music. Happy he 

With such a mother ! faith in womankind 

Beats with his blood, and trust in all things high 310 

Comes easy to him, and tho' he trip and fall 

He shall not blind his soul with clay.' 

' But i; 

Said Ida, tremulously, ' so all unlike — 

It seems you love to cheat yourself with words : 

This mother is your model. I have heard 

Of your strange doubts : they well might be : I seem 

A mockery to my own self. Never, Prince ; 

You cannot love me.' 

• Xay. but thee," I said, 
' From yearlong poring on thy pictured eyes. 
Ere seen I loved, and loved thee seen, and saw 320 

Thee woman thro' the crust of iron moods 
That mask'd thee from men's reverence up, and forced 
Sweet love on pranks of saucy boyhood : now, 
Giv'n back to life, to life indeed, thro' thee. 
Indeed 1 love : the new day comes, the light 
Dearer for night, as dearer thou for faults 
Lived over : lift thine e3'es ; my doubts are dead. 
My haunting sense of hollow shows : the change. 
This truthful change in thee has kill'd it. Dear, 
Look up, and let thy nature strike on mine, 330 

Like yonder morning on the blind half-world : 
Approach and fear not : breath upon my brows ; 
In that fine air I tremble, all the past 
Melts mist-like into this bright hour, and this 
Is morn to more, and all the rich To-come 



114 THE PRINCESS. [vii. 

Reels, as the golden Autumn woodland reels 
Athwart the smoke of burning weeds. Forgive me, 
I waste my heart in signs : let be. My bride. 
My wife, my life. O we will walk this world. 
Yoked in all exercise of noble end, 340 

And so thro' those dark gates across the wild 
That no man knows. Indeed I love thee: come. 
Yield thyself up : my hopes and thine are one : 
Accomplish thou my manhood and thyself ; 
Lav thv sweet hands in mine and trust to me.' 



CONCLUSION. 115 



CONXLUSION. 

So closed our tale, of which I give you all 

The random scheme as wildly as it rose : 

The words are mostly mine ; for when we ceased 

There came a minute's pause, and Walter said, 

' I wish she had not yielded ! ' then to me, 

' What, if you drest it up poetically ! ' 

So pray'd the men, the women : I gave assent : 

Yet how to bind the scatter'd scheme of seven 

Together in one sheaf ? What style could suit ? 

The men required that I should give throughout 10 

The sort of mock-heroic gigantesque, 

With which we banter'd little Lilia first : 

The women — and perhaps they felt their power, 

For something in the ballads which they sang, 

Or in their silent influence as they sat, 

Had ever seem'd to wrestle with burlesque. 

And drove us, last, to quite a solemn close — 

They hated banter, wish'd for something real, 

A gallant fight, a noble princess — why 

Not make her true-heroic — true-sublime ? 20 

Or all, they said, as earnest as the close ? 

\\'hich yet with such a framework scarce could be. 

Then rose a little feud betwixt the two, 

Betwixt the mockers and the realists : 

And I, betwixt them both, to please them both. 

And yet to give the story as it rose. 



ii6 THE PRINCESS. 

I moved as in a strange diagonal, 

And maybe neither pleased myself nor them. 

But Lilia pleased me, for she took no part 
In our dispute : the sequel of the tale 30 

Had touch'd her ; and she sat, she pluck'd the grass. 
She flung it from her, thinking : last, she fixt 
A showery glance upon her aunt, and said, 
' You — tell us what we are,' who might have told, 
For she was cramm'd with theories out of books, 
But that there rose a shout : the gates were closed 
At sunset, and the crowd were swarming now. 
To take their leave, about the garden rails. 

So I and some went out to these : we climb'd 
The slope to Vivian-place, and turning saw 40 

The happy valleys, half in light, and half 
Far-shadowing from the west, a land of peace ; 
Gray halls alone among their massive groves ; 
Trim hamlets ; here and there a rustic tower 
Half-lost in belts of hop and breadths of wheat ; 
The shimmering glimpses of a stream ; the seas ; 
A red sail, or a white ; and far beyond, 
Imagined more than seen, the skirts of France. 

' Look there, a garden ! ' said my college friend, 
The Tory member's elder son, ' and there ! r>o 

God bless the narrow sea which keeps her off. 
And keeps our Britain, whole within herself, 
A nation yet, the rulers and the ruled — 
Some sense of duty, something of a faith, 



CONCLUSION. 117 

Some reverence for the laws ourselves have made, 

Some patient force to change them when we will, 

Some civic manhood firm against the crowd — 

But yonder, whiff ! there comes a sudden heat, 

The gravest citizen seems to lose his head, 

The king is scared, the soldier will not fight, go 

The Utile boys begin to shoot and stab, 

A kingdom topples over with a shriek 

Like an old woman, and down rolls the world 

In mock heroics stranger than our own ; 

Revolts, republics, revolutions, most 

No graver than a schoolboys' barring out ; 

Too comic for the solemn things they are, 

Too solemn for the comic touches in them. 

Like our wild Princess with as wise a dream 

As some of theirs — God bless the narrow seas ! 70 

I wish they w^ere a whole Atlantic broad.' 

'Have patience,' I replied, 'ourselves are full 
Of social wrong ; and maybe wildest dreams 
Are but the needful preludes of the truth : 
For me, the genial day, the happy crowd, 
The sport half-science, fill me with a faith. 
This fine old world of ours is but a child 
Yet in the go-cart. Patience ! Give it time 
To learn its limbs : there is a hand that guides.' 

In such discourse we gain'd the garden rails, so 

And there we saw Sir ^^'alter where he stood, 
Pefore a tower of crimson holly-oaks, 
Among six boys, head under head, and look'd 



ii8 THE PRINCESS. 

No little lily-handed Baronet he, 

A great broad-shoulder'd genial Englishman, 

A lord of fat prize-oxen and of sheep, 

A raiser of huge melons and of pine, 

A patron of some thirty charities, 

A pamphleteer on guano and on grain, 

A quarter-sessions chairman, abler none ; «o 

Fair-hair"d and redder than a windy morn ; 

Now shaking hands with him, now him, of those 

That stood the nearest — now address'd to speech — 

VV^ho spoke few words and pithy, such as closed 

Welcome, farewell, and welcome for the year 

To follow : a shout rose again, and made 

The long line of the approaching rookery swerve 

From the elms, and shook the branches of the deer 

From slope to slope thro' distant ferns, and rang 

Beyond the bourn of sunset; C), a shout kxj 

More joyful than the city-roar that hails 

Premier or king 1 Why should not these great Sirs 

Give up their parks some dozen times a year 

To let the people breathe? So thrice they cried, 

I likewise, and in groups they stream'd away. 

But we went back to the Abbey, and sat on, 
So much the gathering darkness charm'd : we sat 
liut spoke not, rapt in nameless reverie, 
Perchance upon the future man : the walls 
Blacken'd about us, bats wheel'd, and owls whoop'd no 
And gradually the powers of the night, 
'J'hat range above the region of the wind, 
Deepening the courts of twilight, broke them up 



CON CLl'SION- 1 19 

Thro' all the silent spaces or the worlds. 
Beyond all thought into the Heaven of Heavens. 

Last little Lilia, rising quietly. 
Disrobed the glimmering statue of Sir Ralph 
From those rich silks, and home, well-pleased, we 



BIOGRAPHICAL. 



1809. Born at Somersby Rectory, Lincolnshire. 

1814-1820. Cadney's Village School, and Louth Grammar School. 

1827. PocDis by l\vo Brothers. 

1828. Entered Trinity College, Cambridge ; " The Apostles," — 

his college friends : R. M. Milnes, R. C, Trench, F. D. 
Maurice, James Spedding, Henry Alford, Charles Meri- 
vale, C. S. Venables, E. Lushington, Arthur Ilallam. 

1829. Chancellor's Prize Poem, l'ii)ibuctoo. 

1830. Poems ChieJIy Lyrieal ; Visits the Pyrenees with Ilallam. 

1 83 1. Death of his father; Quits Cambridge and returns to Som- 

ersby. 
1832-1833. Poems by Alfred Tennyson. 

1833. Death of Hallam. 

1834. In London ; Friendships at the Anonymous Club : Carlyle, 

E. Fitzgerald, Macready, Thackeray, Landor, Forster, 

Lushington. 
1837. The Tennysons leave Somersby. 

1 83 7- 1 850. High Beach ; Tunbridge Wells ; Boxley ; Cheltenham. 
1842. Poems by Alfred Tennyson. (2 vols.) 
1845. Pension of ;i^200. 
1847. The Princess. 
1850. Married ; Settled at Twickenham ; Published fn Memo- 

riam ; Appointed Poet Laureate. 

1852. Ode on the Death of the Duke of IVclliiigton : Britons, Guard 

Yonr Own ; Hands all Ronnd ; TJie Third of Febriiary. 

1853. Settled at Farringford, Isle of Wight. 



BIOGRAPHICAL. 121 

1S54. C/ia?-ge of the Li^/it B>-i^adt'. 

1855. Maud and Other Poems : Degree of D.C.L. from Oxford. 

1857. Enid and Xiinue : The True and the False. 

1859. Idylls of the Ki Hi;. (Four Poems.) 

i860. Sea Dreams. 

1 86 1. The Sailor Boy. 

1862. New Edition of The Idylls of the King. 
1S64. Enoch Arden, etc. 

1867. Purchased Aldworth Estate, Surrey ; The Song of the JVrens. 

1869. 77ie Holy Grail and Other Poems. 

1871. The last 7^o urn anient. 

1872. Gareth and lynette, etc. 
1875. Queen Mary : A Drama. 
1877. Harold : A Drama. 

1879. Defence of Lucknoic. 

1880. Ballads and Other Poems. 

1 88 1. Despair. 

1884. The Cup and The Falcon published ; Bccket ; Created Baron 

of Aldworth and Farringford. 

1885. Tiresias and other Poems ; Vastness. 

1 886. locksley Hall Sixty Y^uirs After, etc. 

1 888. Edition of Works in 8 vols. ; Geraint and Enid divided 
into The Marriage of Geraint and Geraint and Enid. 

1SS9. Demeter and Other Poems; Idylls of the King, in Twelve 
Books. 

1892. The Foresters : Death, Oct. 6; Death of (Enone, Akbars 
Dream, and Other Poems, published Oct. 28. 

1894. First complete edition of his works, Macmillan & Co. 



NOTES. 



PROLOGUE. 



1-9. Sir Walter Vivian. The Sir Walter Vivian of this poem 
was Sir John Simeon of Swainston, Isle of Wight. While living at 
Lincoln's Inn, London, Tennyson became a member of the famous 
Anonymous Club. This club, composed of such men as Carlyle, 
Landor, Macready, Mill, Thackeray, and Sterling, met once a 
month to discuss literary and social topics, or to celebrate the 
birthdays of the members. Their meeting-place was frequently at 
the old "Cock " Tavern in Fleet Street. It was in remembrance 
of one of these occasions that Tennyson wrote Will Waterproof^ s 
Lyrical Monologue. Lander's invitation to one of these meetings 
reminds one of Horace's invitation to Virgil. 

" I entreat you, Alfred Tennyson, 
Come and share my haunch of venison. 
I have, too, a bin of claret, 
Good, but better if you share it." 

Landor. 

" Virgil, haste. 
Comrade of noble youths, and taste 
Choice wines of Cales : my reward 
One little shell of Syrian nard." 

Book IV., Ode xii. 

It was through Carlyle that Tennyson was introduced to Sir 
John Simeon. Mr. Arthur Waugh says, "There is a well-known 

122 



PROL.] NOTES. 123 

story that tells of Sir John Simeon's introduction to the young poet 
by Carlyle at Bath House, when the philosopher, pointing Tenny- 
son out to his friend, remarked, ' There he sits upon a dung-heap 
surrounded by innumerable dead dogs;" the poet's inclination for 
classical subjects suggesting the indecorous simile." Carlyle after- 
ward apologized to Tennyson for the remark, and the two men 
became fast friends. In writing to Emerson in 1844, Carlyle said, 
"Alfred is one of the few British and foreign figures (a not in- 
creasing number, I think), who are and remain beautiful to me, 
— a true human soul, or some authentic approximation thereto, to 
whom your own soul could say, brother." 

Tennyson's frequent visits to Swainston led him to lay the scene 
of this poem in the grounds of that beautiful estate. This is not the 
only literary association which we prize as related to Swainston. 
On one occasion, after Tennyson had moved to Farringford, he 
read to Sir John Simeon those verses which he wrote in 1836, not 
long after the death of Arthur Hallam, for The Tribute : — 

" O that 'twere possible 
After long grief and pain, 
To find the arms of my true love 
Round me once again I " 

and Sir John said that they needed something more to explain them. 
It was from this suggestion that the poem Maud originated. It 
was written under the old cedar in the grounds at Swainston, and 
published the year in which Tennyson gave the final recast to The 
Princess. 

This friendship of Tennyson and Sir John Simeon must have 
been very beautiful; for when Sir John died, in 1870, Tennyson, 
while walking in the grounds at Swainston, wrote that exquisitely 
touching lyric, /;/ the Garden at S^i'ainston, in which he calls his 
friend "The Prince of Courtesy." For a striking contrast to Sir 
John Simeon see the " County God" in Aylmer's Field. 

The Institute was not the creation of the poet, for many such 
schools for the people existed in England under the patronage 
of large-hearted, genial men like Sir John Simeon. Rev. F. W. 



124 THE PRINCESS. [prol. 

Robertson delivered a course of lectures before such an Institute, 
"The Mechanics' Institution," at Brighton, in 1852. Two of these 
lectures were upon the "Influence of Poetry on the Working 
Classes," and a third upon " Wordsworth." In the first of these 
lectures I find a sentence which sounds the same note as that of 
TJie Princess: — 

" But it appears to me, that in this age of mechanics and Politi- 
cal Economy, when every heart seems ' dry as summer dust,' what 
we want is not so much — not half so much — light for the intel- 
lect, as dew upon the heart." Again, alluding to the fact that he 
had classified Tennyson with poets of the first order, — the men of 
poetic inspiration, — and Pope with those of the second order, — 
men of poetic taste, — he says: — 

"Considerable discussion, I am told, has been excited among 
the men of this Institution by both these positions. It is an abun- 
dant reward to know that workingmen can be interested in such 
questions." This is significant testimony to the willingness of 
mechanics to become interested in poetry, and in the new poetic 
subjects and forms revealed in Tennyson. 

10-24. Walter show'd the house, etc. Cf. The Palace of Art 
for similar picturesque work. Read Walter Bagehot, " Pure, Or- 
nate, and Grotesque Art " (^Literary Studies^ vol. ii.), and J. C. 
Shairp, " Style in Modern English Poetry " {^Aspects of Poetry^, 

Lovelier than their names (z-^). Cf. Parnassus for a similar 
allusion to sciencL-. 

Laborious orient ivory (-^o). What is the figure here? 

Crease (^/). Short dagger. 

35-48. ' miracle of women,' etc. Here we have the shadow 
of coming events. 

How many characters of noble womanhood had Tennyson 
created before that of the Princess? Cf. Dora, Ay Inverts Field, 'Phe 
Miller'' s Daughter, The Gardener'' s Daughter, The Palace of Art, 
and The Lady of Shalotl. Cf. Stopford Brooke, Tennyson, His 
Art and Relation to Modern Lif'^ Chap. T-I\'. Ilcnry \'an Dyke, 
The Poetry of I'enjtyson. 



PROL.] NOTES. 125 

49-88. So sang, etc. Why does the poet centre this scene in 
scientific experiments? In what sense was it prophetic? 

92. Of finest Gothic. Ci. Wordsworth, Sonnets, Ins hie' A'ifi^'s 
College Clu7pel. 

111-113. He had climb'd, etc. The Oxford or Cambridge 
man does not care to be caught out of bounds by the proctor. Mr. 
Richard Harding Davis tells of one who had surprised the dig- 
nitaries by his skill in surmounting the wall, and escaped being 
"sent down" (suspended) on condition that he would divulge 
the means by which he did it. This he did by informing them 
that they would find his answer in The Eighteenth Psalm, twenty- 
ninth verse : "By the help of my God have I leaped over the wall." 
Mr. Davis says that the means of escape is " sometimes a coal-hole, 
sometimes a tree whose branches stretch over the spiked wall, and 
sometimes a sloping roof." 

114-117. Discuss'd his tutor. See similar picture of college 
life in Wordsworth's Prcuiiic, iii., 321-479. 

127-130. There are thousands now. These lines are instinct 
with the spirit of woman in revolt against what has tended to keep 
her limited in her activities, — those activities for which she may 
justly claim a sphere in the life of the world: do they not also con- 
tain the very pith and marrow of what is too often the weakness 
of woman in presenting her cause ? 

134-136. I would build, etc. Critics have thought they 
found the suggestion of this college in Shakespeare's Zone's Labor's 
Lost ; in T/ie Female Academy of Margaret Cavendish, 1662; in 
Defoe's Essay on Projects, 1697 ; and in Johnson's Kasselas : but 
it is very doubtful if the poet was indebted to any of these. Ten- 
nyson, in a letter to Mr. S. E. Dawson, who had published "A 
Study of the Princess," wrote: "There is, I fear, a prosaic set 
growing up among us, editors of booklets, book-worms, index- 
hunters, or men of great memories and no imagination, who impute 
t/iemsehes to the poet, and so believe that he, too, has no imagina- 
tion, but is forever poking his nose between the pages of some old 
volume in order to see what he can appropriate. 



126 THE PRINCESS. [prol. 

" I have known an old fish-wife, who had lost two sons at sea, 
clench her fist at the advanchig tide on a stormy day, and cry out, 
* Ay ! roar, do ! how I hates to see thee show thy white teeth ! ' 
Now, if I had adopted her exclamation and put it into the mouth 
of some old woman in one of my poems, I daresay the critics would 
have thought it original enough, but would most likely have advised 
me to go to nature for my old woman, and not to my own imagina- 
tion; and indeed it is a strong figure. 

" Here is another little anecdote about suggestion. AVhen I 
was about twenty or twenty-one I went on a tour to the Pyrenees. 
Lying among those mountains before a waterfall that comes down 
one thousand or twelve hundred feet, I sketched it (according to 
my custom then) in these words: 

Slow- dropping veils of thinnest lawn. 

When I printed this, a critic informed me that ' lawn ' was the 
material used in theatres to imitate a waterfall, and graciously 
added, ' Mr. T. should not go to the boards of a theatre but to 
nature herself for his suggestions.' And I liad gone to nature 
herself. 

*' I think it is a moot point whether — if I had known how that 
effect was produced on the stage — I should have ventured to pub- 
lish the line." 

137. We are twice as quick. Woman is intuitive, and reaches 
conclusions more quickly than man, whose methods are the slower 
ones of reasoning. In view of these inherent differences in the 
two natures, what is the character of the education each should 
receive ? 

139-148. Pretty were the sight, etc. Now not an uncom- 
mon sight. Emperor-moths {144), so-called because richly colored. 

150-151. That's your light way, etc. Is this a revelation 
of the mood of many men and women to-day — the one too trivial, 
the other too serious — when discussing the vexed question of the 
rights of woman ? 

159-165. They boated, etc.: 



PROL.] NOTES. 127 

" We sauntered, played, or rioted, we talked 
Unprofitable talk at morning hours; 
Drifted about along the streets and walks, 
Read lazily in trivial books, went forth 
.To gallop through the country in blind zeal 
Of senseless horsemanship, or on the breast 
Of Cam sailed boisterously." 

\YoRDSWORTH, Prelude, Book iii. 248-255. 

176-189. We seven stayed, etc. Cf. Clough's Vacation Pas- 
toral, The Bothie of Tober-na- Vuolich. 

199-201. Chimeras, etc. The key-note of the mock heroic in 
the first half of the poem. 

225-230. A Gothic ruin, etc. In view of this casting of the 
poem we know what to expect, — not argument and demonstration, 
but imagination in its gayest and most enchanting mood. Those 
who have criticized the poem because of waywardness of imagina- 
tion, should next try their hand on Love'^s Labor ^s Lost. To put 
such a poem on the Procrustean bed of criticism is indeed to — 

" Misshape the beauteous form of things." 

Mr. E. C. Stedman says: " The anachronisms and impossibili- 
ties invite the reader offhand to a purely ideal world." 

230-231. We should have him back, etc. Mr. Van Dyke 
comments on this as follows; "But unfortunately this gentleman 
did not appear." If by this he intends a compliment to Shake- 
speare, it is well; but if he implies that it was unfortunate that Ten- 
nyson wrote The Princess^ as he evidently does, by calling it a 
"splendid failure," then we should join issue with him. The 
Princess is far from a failure when judged by the laws it creates, 
although it is splendid. We have, instead of A Wititer''s Tale, 
A Summer's Tale; instead of a Midsummer JVighfs Dream, a 
Midsummer Day's Dream; instead of L^ove^s L^abor'' s L.osf, a 
Love's Labor Rewarded. 

232-239. In the second edition ("1848), there were but few 



128 THE PRINCESS. [l. 

alterations; but when the songs were added in 1850, the Prologue 
was remodelled, and these lines added. Cf. note to first song. 
Like linnets (sjS). In hi Mei7ioi-iam , xxi., the poet says: 

" I do but sing because I must, 
And pipe but as the linnets sing." 

" The Master could not tell, with all his love. 

Wherefore he sang, or whence the mandate sped; 
E'en as the linnets sing, so I, he said; 
Ah, rather as the imperial nightingale, 
That held in trance the Ancient Attic shore, 
And charms the ages with the notes that o'er 
All woodland chants immortally prevail ! " 

William Watson. 



CANTO I. 



A careful study of the Prologue produces the same effect upon 
one as does lingering in a beautiful porch to a Gothic cathedral; it 
puts one in the right spirit for appreciating the grandeur of the 
main building. The more familiar we become with it, the more 
fitting it seems for such a noble structure. Cf. Wordsworth's 
remarks upon the Prelude as an introduction to The Excursion^ 
Prose Works, vol. ii. p. 145. 

1-4. A Prince, etc. This seems a bit of personal revelation 
when we read it in the light of Tennyson's work. His Muse is 
assuredly of the north, the region of beautiful shadows, legends 
of knightly men and lovely women, — Arthur, Lancelot, Guinevere, 
and Elaine. 

Mr. Stedman says : " His knights are the old bequest of chivalry, 
yet how stalwart and picturesque ! His early ideals of women are 
cathedral paintings, — scarcely flesh and blood, but certain attri- 
butes personified and made angelical." Cf. Canto IV., 80. 

" And (lark and true and tender is the North." 



I.] NOTES. 129 

Tennyson's imaginative world was where — 

" Loud the Norland whirlwinds blow." 

5-21. There lived an ancient legend, etc. These lines were 
added in the fifth edition. Some have questioned their propriet)' ; 
but they carry so much of the real Tennyson in them, and they are 
so charged with the spirit of the poem, that one would be sorry to 
see them expunged. There is frequent evidence in Tennyson's 
poetry of this " moving about in worlds not realized." In Higher 
Pantheism he says : 

" Dreams are true while they last, and do we not live in dreams? " 

In In Meinoriani^ xcv., as by night he lingered on the lawn, he 
says: 

" So word by word, and line by line, 

The dead man touch "d me from the past, 
And all at once it seem'd at last. 
His living soul was flash' d on mine." 

Again in cxxii. he says: 

" Be quicken'd with a livelier breath, 
And like an inconsiderate boy, 
As in the foi-iiier flash of joy ^ 
I slip the thoughts of life and death." 

"Tennyson was habitually conscious of communion with spirits 
or intelligences not of this world. He was a very Broad Church- 
man, and if he had a pastor in the spiritual sense it was Mr. 
Maurice. That distinguished man held very strong and decided 
opinions as to the reality of conscious spirit communion between 
the living and the dead." — W. T. Stead. 

Cf. To The Rev. F. D. jSIanrice. 

In The Holy Grail, Arthur says : 

" Let visions of the night or of the day 
Come, as they will ; and many a time they come, 



130 THE PRINCESS. [i. 

Until this earth he walks on seems not earth, 
This light that strikes his eyeball is not light, 
This air that smites his forehead is not air, 
But vision," etc. 

In The Ancient Sage and Enoch Arden we have strong evidence 
of this tendency to vision. In 1874 Tennyson wrote : "I have 
never had any revelations through anaesthetics, but a kind of wak- 
ing trance (this for lack of a better name) I "have frequently had 
quite up from my boyhood when I have been all alone. This has 
often come to me through repeating my own name to myself silently, 
till, all at once as it were, out of the intensity of the consciousness 
of individuality, the individuality itself seemed to resolve and fade 
■away into boundless licing, and this not a confused state, but the 
clearest of the clearest, the surest of the surest, utterly beyond 
words, when death was an almost laughable impossibility. The 
loss of personality (if so it were) seeming no extinction, but the 
only true life. I am ashamed of my feeble description. Have I 
not said the state is utterly beyond words ? " 

Tennyson described the same experience to Mr, Knowles in 
these words: " Sometimes, as I sit in this great room, I get carried 
away out of sense and body and rapt into mere existence." 

In Browning's Old Pictures in Florence, there is an allusion to 
the same spiritual vision : 

" And mark through the winter afternoons 
By a gift God gives vie now and then. 
In the wild decline of those suns like moons, 
Who walked in Florence, besides her men." 

There is a still more striking similarity between Tennyson and 
Wordsworth in this power of vision. In the poem To the Cuckoo 
Wordsworth says: 

" O blessed Bird ! the earth we pace 
Again appears to be 
An unsubstantial, faery place, 
That is fit home for Thee !" 



I.] NOTES. 131 

The Ode on Intimations of Immortality is permeated with the 
same spirit. Wordsworth says: "Nothing was more difficult for 
me in childhood than to admit the notion of death as a state appli- 
cable to my own being. I was often unable to think of external 
things as having external existence." 

30-39. Now it chanced, etc. By making the Prince of the 
North and the Princess of the South does Tennyson mean to 
suggest the fact that it has been by means of the northern nations 
that woman has been most honored ? 

Proxy-wedded to a bootless calf (jj). In the Middle Ages 
marriage was often sanctioned by proxy, — by the meeting of the 
bride and representatives of the groom, or of the groom and repre- 
sentatives of the bride. In the former case, after the ceremony of 
acceptance was completed, the bride was laid between the spousal 
sheets ; and the representative of the groom, in the presence of 
noble men and women, put his leg, bare to the knee, between the 
spousal sheets as a consummation. 

It is doubtful if this ceremony ever took place when either of the 
parties was " only eight years old." 

Chaucer was sent as ambassador to France to negotiate a mar- 
riage with the daughter of the king of France and the young Prince 
of Wales, afterward Richard II. 

Cf. Longfellow's Belfry of Bruges. 

And still I wore, etc. (j/). Cf. The Miller's Daughter and 
The Gardener'' s Daughter for types of happy first love. 

Sweet thoughts would swarm, etc. (J9). Compare Tenny- 
son's use of Nature in his early poems, Mariana and The Palace 
of Art ^ where are pure landscape effects, with his use of nature in 
this poem. 

55-56. My half -self, etc. Cf. In JMemoriam, Ixxix. 

" But thou and I are one in kind. 

As moulded like in Nature's mint; 
And hill and wood and field did print 
The same sweet forms in either mind." 



132 THE PRINCESS. [i. 

In a poem prefatory to his brother's sonnets Tennyson wrote: 

" When all my griefs were shared with thee, 
And all my hopes were thine — 
As all thou wert was one with me, 
May all thou art be mine ! " 

We must bear in mind that Tennyson was at work upon In Mc- 
inoriom at this time. For similar love of man for man, cf. Milton's 
Lycidas, Shelley's Adouais, and Arnold's Thyf'sis. 

65. And COOk'd his spleen. Cf. Homer's Iliad, iv. 513. 

"At the ships he cooks his heart-troubling spleen." 

(i'j-'j(). At last I spoke, etc. At this point the scheme of the 
poem becomes such as to admit of the poet's best inventive work. 
It has the variety and rapidity of a tale in romance. Mr. E. C. 
Stedman says: "Tennyson's special gift of reducing incongruous 
details to a common structure and tone is fully illustrated." 

95~99- While I meditated, etc. The use of Nature here — 
reflecting the passion of the prince — is one not uncommon in 
Tennyson. In Guinevere, as the Queen fled to the nunnery at 
Almesbury — 

" All night long by glimmering waste and weald. 
She heard the Spirits of the waste and weald 
Moan as she fled, or thought she heard them moan; 
And in herself she moaned ' Too late ! too late ! ' " 

This reminds one of Wordsworth's lines, — 

" The naked trees, 
The icy brooks, as on we passed, appeared 
To question us, ' Whence come ye, to what end? ' " 

Browning, in Saul {333-336^, makes a similar use of Nature: 

" The same stared in the white humid faces upturned by the 
flowers ; 
The same worked in the heart of the cedar and moved the vine- 
bowers : 



I.] NOTES. 133 

And the little brooks witnessing murmured, persistent and low, 
With their obstinate, all but hushed voices — 'E'en so, it is 
so!'" 

Mr. Wace has noted the similarity between these lines of Ten- 
nyson and those of Shelley in Prometheus Unbound, Act II., 
Scene i, 156-159: — 

" A wind arose among the pines; it shook 

The clinging music from their boughs, and then 
Low, sweet, faint sounds, like the farewell of ghosts, 
Were heard; 'Oh, follow, follow, follow me ! ' " 

There is here such similarity as seems to warrant the thought 
that Tennyson had Shelley's lines in mind; but in his letter to Mr. 
Dawson he says: " I was walking in the New Forest. A wind did 
arise and — 

Shake the songs, the whispers, and the shrieks 

Of the wild wood together. 

The wind, I believe, was a west wind; but, because I wished the 
Prince to go south, I turned the wind to the south, and, naturally, 
the wind said 'Follow.' Shelley's lines are not familiar to me; 
tho', of course, if they occur in the Prometheus, I must have read 
them." 

Does the poet mean by this use of nature to imply that the 
Princess's sequestration was unnatural ? Cf. Gardener's Daughter, 
" The steer forgot to graze," etc. 

For a contrast, see the pathetic song in Elaine : 

" I fain would follow love, if that could l)e; 
I needs must follow death, who calls for me; 
Call and I follow, I follow ! let me die." 

" When Tennyson was only five years old," says Mrs. Anne 
Thackeray Ritchie, "he was playing in the Rectory garden; and, 
as the wind caught and swept him away, he shouted his first line of 
verse, — 



134 THE PRINCESS. [i. 

' I hear a voice that's speaking in the wind.' 

His ear has always been sensitive to sounds in nature." 

"Wailing, wailing, wailing, the wind over land and sea. 
And Willy's voice in the wind, ' O mother, come out to me.' " 

Rizpah. 

*' There was a thunderclap once, and a clatter of hail on the glass, 
And there was a phantom cry that I heard as I tost about. 
The motherless bleat of a lamb in the storm and the darkness 
without." 

In the Children'' s Hospital. 

" There came on Arthur sleeping, Gawain kill'd 
In Lancelot's war, the ghost of Gawain blown 
Along a wandering wind, an'd past his ear 
Went shrilling, ' Hollow, hollow, all delight ! " 

The Passing of Arthur. 

It is worth our while to study carefully such instances in the 
poet's work. 

IOO-II2. Then, ere the silver sickle, etc. Cf. Audley Court 
for another night scene. 

" The town was hushed beneath us: lower down 
The bay was oily calm; the harbor-buoy, 
Sole star of phosphorescence in the calm, 
With one green sparkle ever and anon 
Dipt by itself, and we were glad at heart." 

In ////// ^wiS. grange and bosks we have peculiarly English terms. 

1 13-1 15. Crack'd and small his voice, etc. One should study 
Tennyson's use of nature in this poem to illustrate aspects of human 
life. It will reveal his minute observation, his artist's eye, loving 
the details in man and nature. 

130. The woman were an equal to the man. Cf. F.dwin 

Morris : 



I.J x\OTES. 135 

" I say, God made the woman for the man." 

Cf. Locksley Hall : 
" Something better than his dog, a httle dearer than his horse." 

" Woman is the lesser man." 

These are sentiments in Tennyson's earlier poems, but, I believe, 
not his sentiments. They were sufficient to cause woman to rise in 
her indignation, and they justified her in so doing. 

^34-135- Knowledge, so my daughter held, was all in all. 
Here is the first mistake of the Princess. 

"Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers." 
Locksley Hall. 

" For she is earthly of the mind, 

But wisdom heavenly of the soul." 

In Jllemoriaffi, cxiv. 

" See thou, that countest reason ripe 
In holding by the law within, 
Thou fail not in a world of sin."" 

/;/ Meinoriani, xxxiii. 

*' And yet, when all is thought and said, 
The heart still overrules the head." 

Through a Glass Darkly, Clough. 

*' Contented if he might enjoy 
The things that others understand." 

A Poet's Epitaph, Wordsworth. 

*' So let us say — not ' Since we know, we love ! 
But rather, ' Since we love, we know enough I " " 
A Pillar at Sebzevar, BROWNING. 

136. They must lose the child. The second mistake of the 
Princess, — that in assuming the woman they must do violence to 
their nature. Contrast the idea with Wordsworth's: 



136 - THE PRINCESS. [i. 

" A creature not too bright or good 
For human nature's daily food; 
For transient sorrows, simple wiles, 
Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles." 

137-145. Awful odes she wrote. Tennyson's humor saves 
him from the law of libel. This humor is like Shakespeare's in 
its power of revealing elemental truth. 

151. They see no men. The third mistake of the Princess 
— Sequestration. 

Mr. Stopford Brooke has made some very suggestive comments 
on these three mistakes of the Princess, and reveals the fact that 
under the mock heroic, Tennyson was dealing with what he saw 
plainly was to be one of the articles in the creed of the advocates 
of woman's cause. He says: "All the work of the world ought 
to be done by both of the sexes in harmonious and equal co- 
operation, each sex taking what fits best its hand. Without this 
union the world's work is only half done. And with regard to the 
woman's cause itself, it can make no progress as long as the law 
that in all work both sexes should labor together is disobeyed." 

167-169. From hills that look'd, etc. Compare these lines 
with others in the poem in which a picture is painted with a single 
stroke of the brush. 

174. He with a long low sibilation. What was the exclama- 
tion of the old king ? 

195. In masque or pageant. Cf. In Memoria/n, xxix. 2: 

" With shower' d largess of delight, 

In dance and song and game and jest." 

Cf. INIilton's Coi/ius. 

212-216. But scarce could hear each other, etc. Mr. Dawson 

cites this as an illustration of " feminine precise punctuality." 

Mr. Rolfe says: "Lord Tennyson, in a letter dated Oct. 12, 
1884, calls our attention to Dawson's remark that the girls are 



I.] NOTES. 137 

' uniformly in white.' He says: 'They were in white at chapel as 
we Cantabs were at our Trinity College Chapel in Cambridge ; but 
. . . Lady Psyche's "side" (that is a Cambridge equivalent of 
*' pupils") wore lilac robes, and Lady Blanche's robes of daffodil 
color. These two made ' the long hall glitter like a bed of 
flowers.' " 

217-218. PeaPd the Nightingale. Mrs. Anne Thackeray 
Ritchie says : "As Tennyson was walking at night in a friend's gar- 
den, he heard a nightingale singing with such a frenzy of passion 
that it was unconscious of everything else, and not frightened 
though he came and stood quite close beside it; he could see its 
eye flashing, and feel the air bubble in his ear through the vibra- 
tion." 

Cf . Wordsworth : 

" O Nightingale ! thou surely art 
A creature of a ' fiery heart : ' 
These notes of thine — they pierce and pierce ; 
Tumultuous harmony and fierce ! ' ' 

Cf. Shelley: 

*' One nightingale in an interfluous wood 
Satiate the hungry dark with melody." 

The Woodman and the Nightingale. 
Cf. Keats: 

" Thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees, 
In some melodious plot 
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless, 
Singest of summer in full-throated ease." 

Ode to a Nightingale, 
Cf. Palace of Art : 

" No nightingale delightelh to prolong 
Her low preamble all alone," ' 



138 THE PRINCESS. [t. 

233-234. In such a hand, etc. This figure, like many in the 
poem, is Homeric. 

Cf. Iliad, ii. 147, 148. 

As when the west wind in its fury comes upon a rich field of 

corn, 
And the ears bend and sway under its force. 

Mr. Arnold {^On Translating Homer, pp. 286, 287) says: 
*' Homer presents his thought to you just as it wells from the 
source of his mind; Mr. Tennyson carefully distills his thought 
before he will part with it." 

Cf. W. C. Lawton: Homer, his Arl and Humanity, 

Cf. Paradise Lost, iv. 980, 981. 

" Like Homer, then, and following him, Tennyson keeps his 
nature in this heroic tale chiefly for his similes, to strengthen from 
time to time moments of passion in the tale." 

Stopford Brooke. 

The Homeric element in this poem may possibly be traced to 
the " Morte d'Arthur " of 1842, which, Mr. Stedman thinks, is 
" Homeric to the farthest degree possible in the slow, Saxon move- 
ment of the verse; grander, with its ' hollow oes and aes,' than 
any succeeding canto, always excepting Gtdnevere.''^ 

Mr. Henry Van Dyke cites these lines as an illustration of how 
the poet "dresses up the most commonplace and unpoetical facts 
in elaborate verbiage." What do you say to this criticism ? 

239. Uranian Venus. Mr. Dawson has shown that this is an 
allusion to a passage in Plato's Synnposium. 

"And am I not right in asserting that there are two goddesses ? 
The elder one having no mother, who is called the heavenly Aphro 
dite — she is the daughter of Uranus." 

243-245. To float about, etc. Here nature is not described 
for her own sake, but is charged with the emotions of those who 
are looking upon it. "When the Prince has reached the college 
where the Princess lives, this fine picture of the sea at night is 



II.] NOTES. 139 

equally descriptive of the fulness of his heart, and the prophecy it 
makes and loves." — Stopford Brooke. 



CANTO II. 



The six songs of the poem were added in the third edition. 
That they were then added caused a conjecture that they were an 
after-thought; but in 1882 Tennyson wrote Mr. S. E. Dawson, say- 
ing: "I may tell you that the songs were not an after-thought. 
Before the first edition came out I deliberated with myself whether 
I should put songs in between the separate divisions of the poem; 
again I thought, the poem will explain itself, but the public did 
not see that the child, as you say, was the heroine of the piece; and 
at last I conquered my laziness and inserted them. You would be 
still more certain that the child was the true heroine if, instead of 
the first song as it now stands, 

" As thro' the land at eve we went," 

I had printed the first song which I wrote, 

The losing of the child. 

The child is sitting on the bank of a river, and playing with flow- 
ers; a flood comes down — a dam has been broken through — the 
child is borne down by the flood, the whole village distracted; after 
a time the flood has subsided, the child is thrown safe and sound 
again upon the bank, and all the women are in raptures. I quite 
forget the words of the ballad, but I think I may have it some- 
where." 

The note of the songs is love, wifehood, motherhood, — an 
ascending scale. 

In the prologue the poet has said that the women sang — 

" Like linnets in the pauses of the wind," 



I40 THE PRINCESS. [ii. 

and these linnet songs have captivated every reader of the poem. 
They have elicited universal praise for their lyric grace and beauty, 
their delicate and tender sentiment. Their function in the Med- 
ley has at last been recognized — that of revealing the nature of 
" noble womanhood." 

Charles Kingsley was among the first to point out the signifi- 
cance of the songs. In a review of The Princess ^■jxx'iXQ.Xi in 1850, 
tlie year that the songs were added, he says: "The songs seem, 
perfect as they are, wasted and smothered among the surrounding 
fertility, until wc discover that they serve to call back the reader's 
mind, at every pause in the tale of the Princess's folly, to that very 
healthy ideal of womanhood whiph she has spurned." 

Mr. E. C. Stedman says: " Few will deny that the five melo- 
dies constitute the finest group of songs produced in our century." 

Mr. Stopford Brooke says: "They are of a sweet and gentle 
humanity, of a fascinating and concentrated brevity, of common 
moods of human love made by the poet's sympathy and art to 
shine like the common stars we love so well." 

Mr. Henry Van Dyke, in an article which moves in a "diago- 
nal " more " strange " than that in which he blames the poet of 
moving, alludes to these songs as " jewels which are to the poem 
what the stained-glass windows are to the confused vastness of 
York Minster, — the light and glory of the structure." 

Lines 4 and 13 were not inserted until the fifth edition of the 
poem. Mr. Waugh says that they do not appear in the Manuscript 
of the songs. 

After reading such a perfect piece of work as this song we won- 
der what Coleridge meant when reviewing the volume of 1830 he 
said: " I think there are some things of a good deal of beauty in 
that I have seen. The misfortune is, that he has begun to write 
verses without very well understanding what metre is." Unless 
we are familiar with that volume we are likely to blame Coleridge; 
but when we consider that as Stopford Brooke says: " The songs 
do not even vaguely prophesy the excellence Tennyson afterward 
reached in this kind of poetry" — we see just what Coleridge 
meant. He meant that the greater part of that volume was niedi- 



II.] NOTES. 141 

ocre, as it surely was. A few poems, like Mariana and the Sea 
Fairies, introduced us to a new realm of poetic art, and were as far 
removed from Claribel and Lilian as art from imitation. Mr. Sted- 
man (i886)says that the affectation pervading the early poems 
was merely the error of a poetic soul groping for its true form of 
expression. This is just what Coleridge said in 1830. In the vol- 
ume of 1832-1833 we find Tennyson has done what Coleridge antici- 
pated — " become imbued with a sensation if not a sense of metre, 
without knowing it, just as Eton boys get to write such good Latin 
verses by conning Ovid and Tibullus. " 

For a study of the means by which Tennyson gained his '• com- 
mand of delicious metres and rhythmic susurrus " one should read 
Chapters v. and vi. in Victorian Poets by E. C. Stedman. 

" Melody gives a sensuous existence to poetry; for does not 
the meaning of a poem become embodied in melody?" — Bee- 
thoven. 

"As long as the English language is spoken, the word-music of 
Tennyson will charm the ear." — George Eliot. 

" Not of the howling dervishes of song, 
Who craze the brain with their delirious dance. 
Art thou, O sweet historian of the heart ! " 

Longfellow. 

" Heir of the riches of the whole world's rhyme, 
Dow'r'd with the Doric grace, the Mantuan mien, 
With Arno's depth and Avon's golden sheen." 

William Watson. 

1-4. At break of day, etc. In imitation of the custom at 
Oxford and Cambridge, where the student dons the cap and gown. 
Wordsworth says of his advent in Cambridge : 

" I roamed 
Delighted through the motley spectacle ; 
Gowns grave, or gaudy." 

5. And we as rich, etc. In Tennyson's Cambridge poem, 
Timbuctoo, which won for him the Chancellor's gold medal in 1829, 



142 THE PRINCESS. [ii. 

there is a simile which resembles this, and which shows the .poet's 
early study of nature : 

" Like dusky worms which house 

Beneath unshaken waters, but at once 
Upon some earth-awakening day of Spring 
Do pass from gloom to glory, and aloft 
Winnow the purple." 

7-17. Out we paced, etc. 

" A well-worn pathway courted us 
To one green wicket in a privet-hedge; 
This, yielding, gave unto a grassy walk 
Thro' crowded lilac-ambush trimly pruned; 
And over many a range 
Of waving lime the gray cathedral towers, 
Across a hazy glimmer of the west, 
Reveal'd their shining windows." 

The Gardencj-'' s Daughter. 

Mr. R. H. Hutton says: " The power which makes Mr. Ten- 
nyson's idylls so unique in their beauty, is, I think, his wonderful 
skill in creating a perfectly real and living scene — such as always 
might, and perhaps somewhere does, exist in external nature — for 
the theatre of the feeling he is about to embody, and yet a scene 
every feature of which helps to make the emotion delineated more 
real and vivid." 

20-26. All beauty compass'd, etc. Cf. A Dream of Fair 
]Vomen : 

" At length I saw a lady within call. 

Stiller than chiselTd marble, standing there; 
A daughter of the gods, divinely tall. 
And most divinely fair." 

Cf. Elaijie : 

" To doubt her fairness were to want an eye, 
To doubt her pureness were to want a heart." 



II.] NOTES. 143 

35. "Then ye know the Prince ?" This is indeed a touch 
of nature. What does the poet mean by introducing this question ? 
How is it related to Canto I., 136, 137. 

"They must lose the child, assume 
The woman.*' 

47. Never to wed. This repeats the sentiment in the Prologue, 
150, 151. Mr. Stopford Brooke says that the mistake of the Prin- 
cess was that while she saw both types of womanhood, the enslaved 
and the free, she saw only one type of men in their relation to 
women, and therefore she would not wed. " It was part of her 
theory of isolation to despise all the views of men on her sex, good 
and bad alike; and this foolish contempt is even now (1895) one 
of the reasons for the slow advance of the cause of woman." Wo- 
man's dependence upon love is her strength, not her weakness. 

Cf. The Palace of Art : 

" And he that shuts love out, in turn shall be 
Shut out from love." 

For other types of unnatural sequestration in Tennyson, see St. 
Simeon Stytitcs, Tlie Vision of Sin, St. Agnes, Sir Galahad. 

56-58. Not for three years, etc. " Mixed with the quaint 
old-world flavor of the whole are curious memories of Cambridge 
life, making the poem half a burlesque of university rule." 

Arthur Waugh. 

For like sequestration of man, cf. Shakespeare, Lovers Labor's 
Lost, Act I. 

65. Sabine. Cf. Classical Dictionary. Egeria and Numa 
Pompilius. 

66. Foundress. Semiramis. 

69. Clelia, etc. Cf . ( 'lassical Dictionary. 
71-74. Dwell with these, etc. Cf. Byron: 



144 THE PRINCESS. [ii. 

" My very chains and I grew friends, 
So much a long communion tends 
To make us what we are." 

The Prisoner of Chillon. 

77-79. Drink deep, etc. Here is a note worthy both of the 
poet and of the true woman. Cf. The Spiteful Letter. 

"Brief, brief is a summer leaf. 
But this is the time of hollies. 
O hollies and ivies and evergreens, 
How I hate the spites and the follies." 
Cf. Maud: 
" Below me, there, is the village, and looks how quiet and small ! 
And yet bubbles o'er like a city, with gossip, scandal, and spite." 

79. Better not be at all, etc. 

" Howe'er it be, it seems to me, 
'Tis only noble to be good. 
Kind hearts are more than coronets. 
And simple faith than Norman blood." 

Lady Clara Vere de Vere. 

The keynote of Tennyson's loyalty to woman is sounded here. 
Never does he approach woman but with chivalrous bearing, — in 
reverence. Motherhood stood highest in his esteem; wifehood 
next. 

In a time when such an attitude brought only mockery, as seen 
in Lytton's School Miss Arthur., our knightly poet could retort: 

" What profits it to understand 
The merits of a spotless shirt, 
A dapper foot, a little hand, 
If half the little soul be dirt? " 

Tennyson's strength was as the strength of ten, because his 
heart was pure. 

Cf. Love and Duty. 



II.] NOTES. 145 

S7-88. There sat, etc. Tennyson's poetry everywhere reveals 
his sensitiveness to form and color. His eye is almost the eye of a 
scientist in its accuracy and love of detail. He once said, " A poet's 
writing should be sweet to the mouth and ear; there should be a 
glory of words." 

"The building rook'U caw from the windy tall elm-tree, 
And the tufted plover pipe along the fallow lea." 

Aeio Years Eve. 
" In the Spring a fuller crimson comes upon the robin's breast ; 
In the Spring the wanton lapwing gets himself another crest; 
In the Spring a livelier iris changes on the burnish' d dove." 

Locksley Hall. 
Mrs. Anne Thackeray Ritchie says that the poet once asked her 
to notice whether the skylark did not come down sideways on the 
wing. 

'' Over a stream two birds of glancing feather 
Do woo each other, carolling together; 
Both alike they glide together, 

Side by side. 
Both alike they sing together. 
Arching blue-glossed necks beneath the purple weather." 

Dualisms (a Suppressed Poem of 1839). 
" Those eyes, 
Darker than darkest pansies, and that hair, 
More black than ash-buds in the front of March." 

The Gardeiie)-''s Danglifer. 
" The grasshopper is silent in the grass; 
The lizard, with his shadow on the stone, 
Rests like a shadow, and the cicala sleeps." 

(Enone. 
" And bats went round in fragrant skies, 

And wheel'd or lit, the filmy shapes 
That haunt the dusk, with ermine capes 
And woolly breasts and beaded eyes." 

In ^feiiioriani, xcv. 3. 



146 THE PRINCESS [ii. 

" His truth to Nature is positive; he has the eye of a Thoreau, 
and the pastoral fidelity which befits one who is not only pupil of 
Milton and Keats, but of Theocritus and Wordsworth." 

E. C. Stedman, The Xatiire of Poet jy, 193. 

93-96. At her left, a child, etc. I have said that motherhood 
is Tennyson's highest conception of noble womanhood. We should 
study the influence of the child in this poem; the child holds the 
key to the situation. Study also the influence of the child, Eppie, 
in George Eliot's Silas Marncr, and of Phoebe in Hawthorne's 
House of Seven Gables. 

When Tennyson first saw the Sistine Madonna at Dresden, he 
thought the expression on the child's face too solemn even for the 
Christ within. But some time after, when his son was born, he 
said to his friend Fitzgerald, " Raphael is all right. No man's face 
is as solemn as a child's — full of wonder. One morning he 
watched his babe worshipping the sunbeam on the bed-post and 
the curtain." — Fitzgerald's Reminiscences of Tennyson. 

Miss Elizabeth Wordsworth has breathed this spirit of Tennyson 
in her poem To a Small Boy : — 

" They tell us the world's in a desperate way, 
Instead of improving, gets worse every day. 
At times I believe them, perhaps, till I see 
Your little face peep round the corner at me; 
You can't speak a word, yet you tell us, my pet, 
' Don't worry — the world's got some good in it yet.' " 

We are not surprised at this from a descendant of Wordsworth; 
for it was William Wordsworth who was the first English poet to 
study the child in its distinctive personality, — as a link between 
God and man, the image of the divine. Cf. Ode on Intimations 
of Immortality, We are Seven. 

94. Headed like a star. Homer in speaking of Hector's son, 
Astyanax, says, " he was like unto a star." 

97-98. Than the dame that whisper'd "Asses' Ears." 

Mr. Dawson says, "Ovid is the authority for this story about 



II.] NOTES. 147 

Midas, and he distinctly says it was a barber who was unable to 
keep the secret. Tennyson follows Chaucer in charging it upon 
the female sex." 

Cf. Chaucer, Wife of Bath's Talc, loi. 

" That save his wyf ther wiste of it namo. 
He loved hir moost, and triste hir also ; 
He preyde hire that to no creature 
She sholde tellen of his disfigure. 

And sith she dorste telle it to no man, 
Doun to a mareys faste by she ran. 
Til she came there her herte was a-fyre, 
And as a bitore bombleth in the myre 
She leyde hir mouth unto the water doun; 
' Biwreye me nat, thou water, with thy soun,' 
Quod she, ' to thee I telle it and nanio — 
Myn housbonde hath longe asses erys two. 
Now is myn herte all hool, now it is oute, 
I myghte no lenger kepe it, out of doute.' " 

Cf. Pope, Epistle to Arbttthnot, 68. 

" 'Tis sung when Midas' ears began to spring 
(Midas a sacred person and a king). 
His very minister who spied them first, 
(Some say his queen) was forced to speak or burst." 

101-108. This world was once, etc. Of all the modern 
poets, Tennyson and Browning best illustrate what Wordsworth 
prophesied in 1803 — that poetry and science would walk peace- 
fully together. Wordsworth had defined poetry as " the impas- 
sioned expression which is in the countenance of all science; " 
and he had said that the poet would carry '* sensation into the 
midst of the objects of Science itself." While there is an element 
of burlesque in these lines of Tennyson, as he meant to show 
where woman was to seek relief from the "child," yet they are 
revelations of the direction in which the poet's mind was moving 



14^ THE PRINCESS. [ii. 

in the closing years of our first half-century. Mr. Stopford Brooke 
thinks that Tennyson makes too much of science in the poetry of 
this period. He says: "Tennyson sometimes seemed to feel that 
science was more important than art." 

Possibly The Two Voices is not strengthened as art by so much 
scientific argument; but when we turn to In A/emoriam, xxxi.- 
xxxvi., where the poet makes that study of things eternal, — Knowl- 
edge and Faith, Reason and Revelation, — we see no attempt " to 
part and prove," but to make doubt " vassal unto love." Again in 
the closing cycle of the same poem, cxx., there is no fear that sci- 
ence will cut the nerve of poetry or weaken faith in immortality. 

" I think we are not wholly brain," etc. 

Cf. Parnassus^ By an Evohitionist, Vastness, De Profundis. 
These poems will reveal the fact that Tennyson is in no slavery 
to intellect, but that \\v(t poefs mind \v:x.% his. Tennyson on one 
occasion, in parting with George Eliot, said: "I hope you are 
happy with your molecules." 

It is said that on another occasion, when he was walking in 
the country with the Bishop of Carlyle, he suddenly darted into the 
bushes to listen to a brook and watch the reflections of the trees 
and ferns in its water, and then returned with this exclamation, 
" What an imagination God has ! " 

112. Lycian custom. Taking names from the mother instead 
of from the father (^Herodotns, i. 173). — Davvson. 

113. Lar and Lucumo. Etruscan women who occupied a 
position equal to that of men. 

i5i~i53- To use and power, etc. 

" Full oft the riddle of the painful earth 
Flashed thro' her as she sat alone. 
Yet not the less held she her solemn mirth, 
And intellectual throne." 

The Palace of Art. 

155-164. Dilating on the future. While the Princess was 



II.] NOTES. 149 

never to wed, yet the time would come, after woman's emancipa- 
tion, when women should wed. 

"It would be impossible," says Mr. H. J. Jennings, "to repre- 
sent with a more deceptive glamor of plausibility the modern views 
of 'woman's rights' than in this exquisite passage." Do you 
agree to this ? 

For a picture of that equality in which the poet delights, see 
The Miller '5 Daughter. 

" But that God bless thee, dear — who wrought 
Two spirits to one equal mind 
With blessings beyond hope or thought, 
With blessings which no words can find." 

"Brave conquerors, for so you are, 
That war against your own affections." 

Love'' s Labor'' s L.ost^ i. 8-9. 

Poets whose thoughts enrich (/6^). Cf. The Poet. 

' ' No sword 
Of wrath her right arm whirl 'd. 
But one poor poet's scroll, and with his word 
She shook the world." 
168-169. Till as when a boat, etc. Tennyson's poetry is full 
of allusions to the sea, as is Wordsworth's of allusions to the 
mountains. Cf. "the stranded wreck" in E7ioch Arden ; the 
sight from the " noble down " in To The Rev. F. D. Maurice. 

" Roll' d to starboard, roll'd to larboard." 

The Sailor Boy. 

" And the hollow ocean ridges." 

Locksley Hall. 

"The slowly ridging rollers on the cliffs." 

The Lover ^s Tale. 

" Tho' heapt in mounds and ridges all the sea." 

The Holy Grail. 

Cf. Dante, Lnferno, vii. 13-14. " As sails swelled by the blast 
fall entangled when the mast gives way."" — Churton Collixs. 



I50 THE PRINCESS. [ii. 

I So. The softer Adams, etc. Cf. Love 's Labor 's L.ost, i. 13-14. 

" Our court shall be a little academe 
Still and contemplative in living art." 

1 81-194. 0, sister, etc. The humor here is of the same type 
as that in the episode of the rings, ISLerchant of Venice^ Act v. 

211. War. This is indeed growing 

" Grand, epic, homicidal." 

Prologue, 219. 

222. Beetle brow. Common in Shakespeare. The earliest 
expression of it is, I think, in Piers Plowman, by I^anglande. 

" He was bitel-browed. 
And baber-lipped also." 
224. As he bestrode. Stood over to defend him in the tour- 
nament. Cf. I. LLenry LV., act v., scene i., 122. 

229-236. With whom I sang, etc. Cf. Ode to JLemory, iv. 

" Come from the woods that belt the gray hill-side," etc. 

260, 261. The mother, etc. Cf. Rizpah, the poem of the 
tragedy of motherhood, of the infinitude of a mother's love. 

273. When love and duty clash. Here love is lord over 
duty; but in I .ove and Duty, the poet has given us the contrary 
conditions, where duty holds the supreme place. 

290-298. With that she kissed, etc. The beauty of this 
poem lies in the fact that the imagination is alternately grave and 
gay, with a steady growth from gaiety to gravity and sweet serious- 
ness. I say sweet seriousness because it is always based upon the 
affections. In such scenes as we have here, Tennyson found great 
delight. The clear, transparent, bracing atmosphere of lovely 
domesticity gave him his hope for the race. The noble and chaste 
love of Elaine, and the patient heroism of Enid, reveal to us the 
soul of enduring womanhood. Witness that beautifully tender 
revelation of Enid, as she finds herself at home in her husband's 
love : 



II.] NOTES. 151 

"And never yet, since high in Paradise 
O'er the four rivers the first roses blew, 
Came purer pleasure unto mortal kind 
Than lived thro' her, who in that perilous hour 
Put, hand to hand beneath her husband's heart, 
And felt him hers again: she did not weep, 
But o'er her meek eyes came a happy mist 
Like that which kept the heart of Eden green 
Before the useful trouble of the rain." 

Cf. Edith and Leolin in Aylmer's Field, 82-100. 

303. April daffodilly. The Quarterly Reviciv had insisted 
that daffodils were not " April guests." 

" On the Quarterly Review'' s objection \.o April daffodilly. Lord 
Tennyson writes us: ' Daffodils in the north of England belong as 
much to April as to March. I myself remember a man presenting 
me in the streets of Dublin the finest bunch of daffodils I almost 
ever saw, on the 15th of April. It amused me at the time, for I 
had just been reading the Quarterly article.' We may add that 
ten days of Shakespeare's March properly belonged to April, as 
we now reckon it." — W. J, ROLFE. 

305-307. And all her thoughts, etc. Cf. Baliii and Balan : 

" To right and left the spring, that down 
From underneath a plume of lady fern 
Sang, and the sand danced at the bottom of it." 

319. Danaid. Cf. the J/yt/i of the Daughters 0/ Dana is. 

341-346. We turned to go, etc. What is the significance of 
this episode ? 

355-357. And quoted odes, and jewels five-words-long. In 
no English poet since Shakespeare are there so many jewels in rare 
settings of song as in Tennyson. Mr. Stedman, speaking of Ten- 
nyson and Theocritus, says : 

" Where Tennyson's rustic and civic graduates content them- 
selves with jest and debate, it is after a semi-amoebean fashion, 
which no student of the Syracusan idyls can fail to recognize." 



152 THE PRINCESS. [ii. 

367-377. Why, Sirs, etc. Of Cyril in this episode Mr. Stop- 
ford Brooke says: "This is the natural man, who thinks that love 
is all, who, when he loves, idealizes the woman into the teacher of 
things which no teacher can give him, but who always thinks that 
his man's strength is natural victor over the woman." Cf. Canto 
vi. 147-150. 

Cyril's love of love is to be contrasted with the Princess's love of 
learning; not that he loves learning less, but love more. 

384. A Psyche. Cf. Cupid 2,xv^ Psyche^ Classical Dictionary. 

389. Ghostly hauntings. Why does the poet treat these 
"ghostly hauntings" as weaknesses ? Is it to make the prince 
seem less heroic, and to show that it was 

" Nature, not the Prince, who won her heart," 
as Mr. Morton Luce suggests ? 

390-411. Flatter myself that I know, etc. Is there any- 
where in Tennyson a vein of humor more Shakesperean than that 
to be found in these lines ? Not always when Tennyson attempts 
humor is he successful, but here he is irresistible in his gay gravity 
and his grave gaiety. It is here that lies concealed the first and 
most powerful enemy of the unnatural sequestration of the college, 
— love. 

420, Astrsean. Cf. Classical Dictionary, Astrcca. Also Mil- 
ton's Hymn on the Nativity, 133. 

424-428. Lady Blanche. At this stage in the plot can you 
interpret these lines ? 

439, 440. And murmured that their May was passing. Mr. 
Morton Luce suggests this as a justification for the " three years " 
regulation. Do you agree with him ? 

442. That men hated learned women. This sentiment has 
been worked to its utmost by those who have no genuine sympathy 
with the woman's cause. It contains just enough of truth to make 
it dangerous. Weak women use it; and silly men, who want a 
woman to be a doll, push it to extremes. The fact is that intelli- 
gent men love intelligent (not strong-minded^ women. An in- 
telligent woman is more lovely, more womanly, for her intelligence 



III.] NOTES. 153 

when it is the connecting hnk between the lower and the higher 
natures, — the IVhat Does and the IVhat Is. 

The unity of the three natures necessary to preserve a true bal- 
ance is the subject of much of Browning's poetry. He says there 
are — 

" Three souls which make up one soul; first, to wit, 

A soul in each and all the bodily parts, 

Seated therein, which works, and is what Does, 

And has the use of earth, and ends the man 

Downward: but tending upward for advice, 

Grows into and again is grown into 

By the next soul, which seated in the brain, 

Useth the first, with its collected use, 

And feeleth, thinketh, willeth, — is what Knows 

Which duly tending upward in its turn. 

Grows into and again is grown into 

By the last soul, that uses both the first, 

Subsisting whether they assist or no, 

And, constituting man's self, is what Is — 

And leans upon the former, makes it play, 

As that played off the first ; and tending up, 

Holds, is held by God, and ends the man 

Upward in that dread point of intercourse, 

Nor needs a place, for it returns to Him. 

What Does, what Knows, what Is; three souls, one man." 

Death hi the Desert. 

An education which neglects the culture of the imagination is 
as sure to make men narrow and women proud, as is the neglect 
of intellectual training to make the one shallow and the other 
weak. 

CANTO III. 

SONG. 

We have had the song of reconciliation of husband and wife 
over the grave of their little one; and here we have the cradle 



154 THE PRINCESS. [in. 

song — perhaps the most exquisite of all of Tennyson's lyrics — ■ 
breathing the mighty influence of the little one to keep the husband 
and father — 

"True to the kindred points of Heaven and Home.'' 

Cf. I'he Poet's Song: 

" And the nightingale thought, ' I have sung many songs, 
But never a one so gay, 
F"or he sings of what the world will be 
When the years have died away.' " 

1-6. Morn in the white wake, etc. Cf. I.o7'c and Duty : 

" Then when the first low matin-chirp hath grown 
Full quire, and morning driv'n her plough of pearl 
Far furrowing into light the mounded rack. 
Beyond the fair green field and eastern sea." 

Cf. Shakespeare, Sonnet xxxiii. : 

" Full many a glorious morning have I seen 
Kissing with golden face the meadows green, 
Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy." 

Cf. Keats: 

" The air was cooling, and so very still 
That the sweet buds wdiich with a modest pride 
Pull droopingly, in slanting curve aside, 
Their scantly leaved, and finely tapering stems. 
Had not yet lost those starry diadems 
Caught from the early sobbing of the morn." 

It is interesting to compare these lines of Alfred Tennyson with 
those in the sonnets of his brother Charles : 

" A wild-rose odor from the fields was born ; 
The lark's mysterious joy filled earth and air, 
And from the wind's top met the hunter's horn ; 
The aspen trembled wildly; and the morn 
Breathed up in rosy clouds divinely fair." 



III.] NOTES. 155 

18. She says, etc. P'or a contrast to Lady Blanche, see Dora. 
56. To tumble Vulcans. Cf. Milton, Paradise Lost, i. 740: 
"And how she felt," etc. 

64-68. Too jealous. Mr. Dawson says; " Lady Blanche is 
the one thoroughly repulsive woman in all Tennyson's works. She 
pours vitriol on the memory of the husband of her youth, whom 
she calls a fool, but whose character, as we see it reflected in the 
truthful and sunny-hearted Melissa, is of a higher type than her 
own. Happy was he in his early escape from her awful and trans- 
cendent capacity for ' nagging.' " 

Mr. Luce says: "Melissa was hardly justified in speaking of 
her mother as she did to perfect strangers ; and she ill becomes the 
part assigned her by the poet, that, namely, of dragging in her 
wretched father." Do you agree to this ? 

Still {p8). Continually, as in Merchant of Venice, Act I., 
Scene i. 

" I should be still 
Plucking the grass, to know where sits the wind." 

88-90. The crane, etc. 

" Dear is cicala to cicala, dear 
The ant to ant, and hawk to hawk, but I 
Hold only dear to me the Muse and Song." 

Pastorals, Theocritus, ix. 31-33. — Stedman. 

91-96. My Princess, etc. This noble tribute of the Prince is 
worthy of him and of the woman whom he loves. She is not per- 
fect; but her error is not that of selfishness, for she sinks her own 
desires in that of ' every woman else.' " 

99. Here. Cf. Virgil, i. 16. Juno. 

100. A Memnon, etc Cf. Pausanias, i. 42: 

" Settled in her eyes 
The green malignant light of coming storm." 

Churton Collins. 



,56 THE PRINCESS. [m. 

101-107. So saying, etc. Tennyson, with all liis love of 
detail, has the courage to reject, and hence all his pictures of 
landscape are delightful in their suggestiveness. 
Cf. Gei-aint and Enid : 

" So thro' the green gloom of the wood they past, 
And issuing under open heavens beheld 
A little town with towers, upon a rock. 
And close beneath, a meadow gemlike chased 
In the brown wild, and mowers mowing in it." 
Dawson cites Shelley, Epipsychidion : 

"The light, clear element," etc. 
126. Limed. A figure taken from snaring of birds. Cf. Shake- 
speare, Hamlet , III., iii. 68: 

" O limed soul." 
128. But such extremes. Q,{. Of old sat Freedom : 

" Turning to scorn with lips divine 
The falsehood of extremes." 

Tennyson's conservatism was born of the Greek — " Nothing to 
excess. " 

131. I tried the mother's heart. The mother's heart in 
Lady Blanche was shrivelling by neglect : — 

" So the Powers who wait 
On noble deeds, cancell'd a sense misused." 

Godiva . 

Tennyson, when planning the Idylls of the A7;/^'with the purpose 
of revealing the true relation of man and woman, gave the title 
to the first four, in 1859, Enid, Vivien, Elaine, and Guinevere, 
"The True and tlie False." His studies in Eocksley Hall, The 
Princess, and Maud must have furnished him abundant material. 

153, 154. That afternoon the Princess rode, etc. Mr. Fred- 
erick Harrison, in Early Victorian Literature (p. 39), says: " The 
world is growing less interesting, less mysterious, less manifold, at 
any rate to the outer eye. It is the lady-like nge, the epoch of the 



III.] NOTES. 157 

dress-coal, the prize lad, and the girl of the period. This is adverse 
to high art: it is asphyxiating to romance." 

Is this what Tennyson teaches in the Princess's love of scientific, 
rather than of imaginative, activity ? 

172-174. "And I myself the shadow of a dream," etc. 

" Vex't with waste dreams ? for saving I be joined 
To her that is the fairest under heaven, • 

I seem as nothing in the mighty world 
And cannot will my will, nor work my work. 
Wholly. . . . But were I joined with her, 

Then might we live together as one life." 

The Coining of Arthur. 
198-209. Poor boy ! etc. This is splendidly brave on the part 
of the Princess, and yet it is surely fatal as a means of elevating 
woman. 

*' When knowledge neglects or denies the imagination, the 
affections, the sentiment of life, there is nothing so certain to take 
the wrong road, and to ruin the course it boasts that it supports. 
Women do not want less emotion, but larger emotion." 

Stopford Brooke. 
212. Vashti. Cs. Esther \. 12. 

215. Breathes full East. With the haughtiness of an Oriental 
ruler ? 

220-229. Ere half be done, etc. This is the real Tennyson. 
Does he deny woman the privilege of interesting herself in great 
enterprises ? 

234-244. Yet will we say, etc. The beauty of the Princess 
is everywhere apparent ; for our poet reveals it in her struggle to 
throw off the bond of Nature, — a struggle set in motion by Lady 
Blanche, whose treatment of her husband and child is not entirely 
due to her devotion to the cause of woman. To appreciate these 
allusions to the child, one must keep in mind the previous songs. 

246. Pou Sto. Archimedes said: "Give me where I may 
stand, and I'll move the earth," 



158 THE PRINCESS. [111. 

262. Gynaeceum. Cf. Classical Dictionary. 
265-271. If we could give, etc. "In the noble enthusiasm 
of Ida, we recognize the quality which Guinevere lacked to make 
her the ideal wife of Arthur." — Dawson. 
285. Diotima. Cf . Classical Dictionary. 

289-298. Methinks, etc. Tennyson's protest against the cus- 
tom of vivisection is here strong and natural. Wordsworth had 
anticipated the cruelty of those who had little reverence for life 
when scientific data were made the " be all " and the " end all " 
of knowledge. 

"Physician art thou? one all eyes, 
Philosopher ! a fingering slave, 
One that would peep and botanize 

Upon his mother's grave." — A Poet's Epitaph. 

"Our meddling intellect 
Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things : — 
We murder to dissect." — 77ie Tables Turned. 

It is not against Science, but against the coldness and irrever- 
ence which must result from merely intellectual activity, that the 
poets protest. It is of this Tennyson speaks in The Poet's Mind. 

"Where you stand you cannot hear 
From the groves within 
The wildbird's din. 

And it sings a song of undying love ; 
And yet, tho' its voice be so clear and full, 
You never would hear it ; your ears are so dull." 
Cf. /;/ the Childrett^s Hospital. 
"I could think he was one of those who would break their jests 
on the dead. 
And mangle the living dog that had loved him and fawned at 

his knee — 
Drenched with the hellish oorali — that e'er such things 
should be ! " 



m.] NOTES. 159 

Wordsworth made his protest against a lende7icy in the closing 
years of the last century ; Tennyson made his against the same 
tendency which had become a dangerous and heartless custom in 
1850; and Browning by word and act condemned the abhorred 
practice in the closing year of our century. He was a Vice-Presi- 
dent of the Victoria Society for the Protection of Animals, and an 
ardent supporter of the Anti-vivisectional Hospital. This noble 
poet was willing to follow wherever Science led, provided he could 
be loyal to his creed : 

"All's love, yet all's law." 
In his poem Tray^ in which he tells the story of a faithful dog 
who saved a drowning girl, he ridicules the "intellectual all in 
all " who wanted to ascertain, — 

"By vivisection, at expense 
Of half-an-hour and eighteen pence, 
How brain secretes the dog's soul." 
In Arcades Aniho he again shows us the cowardly nature of 
such a character, — 

" Who would have no end of brutes 
Cut up alive to guess what suits 
His case, and save his toe from ghosts." 
303-304. Were you sick, etc It is such revelations as these 
that make us sure the Princess, though counting, — 

'Reason ripe in holding by the law within,' will 'fail not in a 
world of sin.' 

306-315. Let there be light, etc. Tennyson has elaborated 
the thought of these lines in many a poem. Cf. Higher Panthe- 
ism, The Tivo Voices, and In Memoriam, second cycle, Ixviii.-ciii. 
Browning has given us a similar revelation in Rabbi Ben Ezra : 
"All- that is at all 
Lasts ever, past recall ; 

Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure ; 
What entered into thee, 
That was, is, and shall be." 



i6o THE PRINCESS. [iv. 

The Shadow, Time (j/j). Cf. Wordsworth, Yew Trees of 

Borrowdale : 

"Death, the Skeleton, 
And Time, the Shadow." 

319-347, ''Oh, how sweet," etc. Tennyson still keeps his 
book and has his " finger in it ; " so we have the happy mingling of 
reason and romance, with an occasional salad of sarcasm. 

Fanny Kemble, in Records of a Girlhood (1832), says of the 
poet: "Now and then there is a slight sarcastic expression about 
Tennyson's mouth that almost frightens me, in spite of his shy 
manner and habitual silence." 

Mr. Frederick Harrison, speaking of the decay of romance since 
the death of Thackeray, 1863, says: "What is the cause? " I do 
not hesitate to say it is that we have over-trained our taste, we are 
overdone with criticism, we are too systematically drilled. Every- 
one is afraid to let himself go, to offend the conventions, or to 
raise a sneer. ... It is the penalty of giving ourselves up to 
mechanical culture. . . . Hence the enormous growth of the 
Kodak school of romance, — the snap-shots at every-day realism 
with a hand camera." 

Elysian lawns, etc. {324). Dawson suggested that this was a 
reference to the plains and towns of Troy ; and that hiii/t to the sun 
alluded to the origin of the city built to the music of Apollo's lyre; 
but Lord Tennyson wrote to Mr. Rolfe as follows: "The Elysian 
lawns are the lawns of Elysium, and have nothing to do with Troy 
— or perhaps they rather refer to the Islands of the Blest (Pindar, 
Olymp. 2d)." 

Fair Corinna's triumph (jj/). Over Pindar. Cf. C/assieal 
Dictionary. 

CANTO IV. 

SONG. 
" In the facsimile of the manuscript of the songs, complete 
except for the omission of ' Sweet and Low ' published by Professor 
Theodore Rand, the refrain, 



IV.] NOTES. i6i 

' Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying, 
Blow, bugle; answer echoes, dying, dying, dying,' 

is not found;, but the word (Chorus), inserted in a different ink, 
seems to suggest that a refrain was to follow." — A. Waugh. 

*' Never was song more intelligently and passionately praised 
than this. The " Bugle Song " seems to many the most perfect lyric 
since the time of Shakespeare." — E. C. Stedman. 

"This is the noblest of the Songs; a clear, uplifted, softly-ringing 
song. It sings, in its short compass, of four worlds, of ancient 
chivalry, of wild nature, of romance where the horns of Elfland 
blow, and of the greater future of mankind." 

Stopford Brooke. 
"The idea of this song is twin-labor and twin-fame." 

Charles Kingsley. 
A song which naturally suggests itself as the realization of the 
prophecy in the " Bugle Song " in that glorious peal in The Coming 
of Arthur : 

" Blow, trumpet, for the world is white with May ; 
Blow, trumpet, the long night hath roll'd away ! 
Blow thro' the living world — ' Let the King reign.' 

" Blow, trumpet! he will lift us from the dust. 
Blow, trumpet ! live the strength and die the lust ! 
Clang battle-axe, and clash brand ! Let the king reign ! " 

Cf. In Memoriavi, cvi. ; 

By keeping our ears and hearts attuned to such melodies of 
action and passion, we shall gain in sweetness and light. Mr. 
William Watson, a poet whom Tennyson generously praised, has 
sounded anew the healthful note of his great teacher: 

*' As we wax older on this earth. 

Till many a toy that charmed us seems 
Emptied of beauty, stripped of worth. 
And mean as dust, and dead as dreams, — 
For gauds that perished, shows that passed. 
Some recompense the Fates have sent : 



i62 THE PRINCESS. [iv. 

Thrice lovelier shine the things that last, 
The Things that are more excellent." 

William Watson. 

Mrs. Anne Thackeray Ritchie says: " Here is a reminiscence of 
Tennyson's about the echo at Killarney, where he said to the boat- 
man, ' When I was last here I heard eight echoes, and now I hear 
only one.' To which the man, who had heard people quoting the 
'Bugle Song,' replied, 'Why, you must be the gentleman that 
])rought all the many to the place.' " 

Reco?'ds of Tennyson, J\iiskin, firownini^, P- S^- 

1-2. There sinks the nebulous star, etc. Compare these 
lines with 1-2 of Canto ill. Science Tcrsiis poetry. 

Lowell once said that one lobe of the brain should be Platonic 
and the other Aristotelian. 

12-17. But when we planted level feet, etc. Compare these 
lines with 212-218, Canto i. Science and /Esthetics are not in- 
compatible in this university. There is a normal order reflected 
here — from sense to imagination. 

21-40. Mr. Waugh, alluding to Tennyson's early days in 
Lincolnshire, says: "They must have made an easy-going, rather 
primitive, and very picturesque life; they must have inspired that 
harmony of mind with nature which was afterwards to prove so 
distinctive a characteristic of the Laureate's verse." 

The note of regret is prominent in the poetry of Tennyson pre- 
vious to 1850. It is in In Mcmoriani that the transition from sor- 
row over the past to hope and joy in the future takes place; and 
it is by means of love that this is brought about. 

Mrs. Anne Thackeray Ritchie says: "Tennyson told me that 
'Tears, idle Tears,' was suggested by Tintern Abbey; but who 
shall define by what mysterious wonder of beauty and regret, by 
what sense of the ' transient with the abiding ' ? " 

Wordsworth's Tintern Abbey should be read here, in order to 
reveal the striking contrast to this mood of Tennyson. Words- 
worth's note everywhere is : — 



IV.] NOTES. 163 

" That time is past, 
And all its aching joys are now no more, 
And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this 
Faint I, nor mourn, nor murmur : other gifts 
Have followed: for such loss, I would believe. 
Abundant recompense."* 
Again, in the Ode on Intimations of Immortality : 
" Though nothing can bring back the hour 
Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower ; 
We will grieve not, rather find 
Strength in what remains behind ; 
In the primal sympathy 
Which having been must ever be." 

Mr. Stopford Brooke, after alluding to the fact that " there is 
no supreme or vital passion between the sexes expressed by Ten- 
nyson," says that there are always exceptions to general statements 
of this kind; '■'■ Elaine draws near to such an exception ; and the 
song in The Pj'incess, 'Tears, idle Tears,' is sung by a girl, and 
she sings it in her own person." He says lines 36-38 "are inti- 
mate with a passion elsewhere almost unknown in Tennyson." 

Other poems which express longing for lost love are, — 

"O that 'twere possible." {Maud.) 
" Come not when I am dead." 
"Break, break, break." 

Mr. Dawson says: "The idea of this lyric had been resting in 
the poet's mind since 1 851. Then at the age of twenty-two he 
published in The Gem the following poem omitted from the recent 
editions of his works. 

" O Sad N'o mo7'e I O Sweet A'i? more ! 
O Strange Xo more ! 
By a mossed brook-l)ank on a stone 
I smelt a wildwood flower alone ; 
There was a ringing in my ears. 
And both my eyes gushed out with tears ; 



i64 THE PRINCESS. [iv. 

Surely all pleasant things had gojie before, 
Low-buried fathom deep beneath with thee, 
A^o moi-e.'''' 

Cf. Wordsworth, " On Revisiting the Wye a few miles above 
Tintern Abbey." 

44-48. If indeed there haunt, etc. If the "maid" has few 
forward-looking hopes, the Princess can yet praise the power of 
her song, which, Siren-like, will allure the Ulysses wandering 
near the university island. 

48-69. But thine are fancies, etc. 

"Tennyson, in one of the noblest similes in the poem, paints 
the disappearance of the mightiest ideas of the past in the warm 
life of the future." — Stopford Brooke. 

In 1831, Arthur Hallam wrote to Leigh Hunt: "You will be 
surprised and delighted to find a new prophet of those true princi- 
ples of Art, which in this country you were among the first to 
recommend both by precept and by example." A magnificent 
prophecy indeed ! and how truly it has been realized ! 

Kex (59). Dry hemlock. 

Beard-blown goat (60). "The wind blowing the beard of 
the goat on the height of the ruined pillar." — Tennyson to 
Dawson. 

A death's-head at the wine (69). An Egyptian custom men- 
tioned by Herodotus (i. 78): "At their convivial banquets, among 
the wealthy classes, when they have finished supper, a man car- 
ries round in a coffin the image of a dead body carved in wood, 
made as like as possible in color and workmanship, and in size 
generally about one or two cubits in length ; and showing this to 
each of the company, he says, ' Look upon this, then drink and 
enjoy yourself ; for when dead you will be like this.' " — Dawson. 

75-98. swallow, swallow, flying, flying South. 

Mr. Stedman says: "The Swallow Song is modelled upon the 
isometric songs in the third and eleventh idyls of Theocritus." 
Compare stanzas iii. and iv. with The Serenade (Theocr., iii. 
12-14). 



IV.] NOTES. 165 

" Would that I were 
The humming-bee, to pass within thy cave, 
Thridding the ivy and the feather- fern 
By which thou'rt hidden." 

Cyclops (Theocr., xi, 54-57). 

"Oh, that I had been born a thing with fins 
To sink anear thee, and to kiss thy hands, — 
If thou denied'st thy mouth, — and now to bring 
White lilies to thee, and the red-leaved bloom 
Of tender poppies." 

"Tennyson and Theocritus," Victorian Poets. 

"The song is lovely in movement; its wing-beating and swift- 
glancing verse is like the flight of the bird that has suggested it." 
— Stopford Brooke. 

100. Like the Ithacensian suitors. Cf. Homer's Odyssey, 
XX. 347, et al. 

104. Bulbul, any rose of Gulistan, etc. BuUnd, Persian 
for nightingale; Gulistan, rose-garden; marsh diver, water rail; 
meadow rake, corn crake or land rail, most unmusical of birds. — 
Dawson. 

110-114. Knaves are men. Cf. v. 147-150. 

1 19-124. But great is song. Cf. The Poefs Song. 

"To lull with song an aching heart. 
And render human love his dues." 

In Memoriam, xxxvii. 

" And if the song were full of care. 

He breathed the spirit of the song ; 
And if the words were sweet and strong, 
He set his royal signet there." 

In Memoriam, cxxv. 

" Song was never put to grander use than in the noble elegy, 
In Memoriam. Put aside for the moment any question about the 
ideas, inspiration, or power of the poem as a whole, and consider 



1 66 THE PRINCESS. [iv. 

that, in all those hundreds of stanzas, there is hardly one line 
that is either careless, prosaic, or harsh, — not a single false note, 
nothing commonplace, nothing over-colored, but uniform harmony 
of phrase." — Frederick Harrison. 

"These two gifts, that of an infinitely varied slow music and 
dreamy motion in lyric, and that of concerted blank verse, with his 
almost unequalled faculty of observation and phrasing as regards 
description of nature, were, I think, the things in Tennyson which 
first founded Tennyson's worship in me; and these, I am sure, are 
what have kept it alive." — George Saintsbury. 

" Master who crown 'st our immelodious days 
With flower of perfect speech." 

William Watson. 
146. I smote him on the breast. 

" Each be hero in his turn, 
Seven, and yet one." 

Prologue, 220. 

How does this act of the Prince form the dramatic crisis of 
the story ? It is interesting to note in this connection that in 
Shakespeare's five-act plays, like the il/crchant of J^enue, the 
centre of dramatic gravity is in the third act ; here in a seven-act 
play it is in the fourth. 

164-171. Plunged, etc. "That the great reformer, in her 
flight from man, should have to submit to being rescued by a man, 
was indeed disturbing to her independence." — Miss E. HuNTER. 

Professor Hadley cites these verses as illustrations of rhythm 
adapted to express laborious effort. 

182-184. Two great statues. Never were art and science 
more happily wedded than in the poetry of Tennyson. Although 
he lived for his art, yet he saw clearly that in this age emotion 
must be weighted with the power of wisdom. Mr. Myers says: 
"The potent nature, which in youth felt keenlier than any con- 
temporary the world's beauty and charm, has come with age to 
feel with like keenness its awful majesty, the clash of unknown 
energies, and ' the doubtful doom of human Kind.' " Cf. Dream 



iv.J NOTES. 167 

of Fair IVovien as an illustration of earlier, and Vasincss as an 
illustration of later spirit. 

185. The hunter. Actseon. Cf. Classical Dictionary. 

200. Out SO late is out of rules. By a rule of Balliol College, 
Oxford, an undergraduate and his friends are fined if he or they 
pass the gate after nine o'clock, P.M. Cf. Historic l^ozvns, Oxford 
and Cambridge, or Our English Cousins, chapter iii., R. H. Davis. 

Another illustration of conservatism at the English Universities 
has lately come to notice in the contest over the proposition to 
admit women to the degree of B.A. In opposing this, one of the 
Oxford dons is reported as saying that the degree represented not 
merely the passing of examinations, but that the possessor of it had 
had something of university life^ and that a B.A. who had never 
burned a tutor in effigy, or lit a bonfire, or " screwed up " a don, 
would be a mere humbug. 

At Oxford and Cambridge women have been admitted to the 
lectures and to many examinations, but no degree has been granted. 
It was significant that in the recent controversy nothing was said 
about the relative intellectual capacity of the sexes. That aspect 
of the case has ceased to attract disputants. The records show 
that during the last fifteen years 659 women have secured places 
in the honor lists, and have won distinction in all branches of study 
in the two universities. 

207, 208. And couch'd behind a Judith, etc. These two 

■lines refer to the old English epic (fragment), Judith, which is 

based on the Apocryphal Book of Judith. Holofernes was the 

heathen prince, 

« 
" He, most of all men, wrought murders and crimes, 

Harrowing hardships, and higher had heaped them." 

Judith. 

Judith was the Christian girl who became the champion and 
savior of her people by her ridding them of Holofernes, whom she 
put to death. 

That Tennyson had this old epic in mind is made more probable 
from the fact that he had tried his hand at translating the old poem, 



i68 THE PRINCESS. [iv. 

Battle of BriDiatihurgh (p. 534, Macmillan), an old war-song of 
the tenth century, from which he took the verse-plan (simplicity 
and force) for the Charge of the Light Brigade. 

Judith is by some ascribed to Caedmon, 630 ; it surely belongs 
to the cycle of Caedmon. 

209-220. Girl after girl is called, etc. The whole institution 
is shaken to its foundations. That three foes had been secreted 
there was enough, but that Lady Blanche, Lady Psyche, and 
Melissa should have known it and not have informed the Princess 
— this was treason indeed, which demanded the severest punish- 
ment. 

235-238. He has a solid base of temperament, etc. Cf. 
Wordsworth's Flxciirsion, v. 

" And like the water-lily, lives and thrives 
Whose root is fix'd in stable earth, whose head 
Floats on the tossing waves." 

ix. " Lilies of each hue, 

Golden and white, that float upon the waves, 
And court the wind." 

240-251. Two Proctors. Although Tennyson " takes deject- 
edly his seat upon the intellectual throne," and regret is frequent 
in his poems, yet his humor is at times as delicate and subtle as is 
to be found in our literature. Cf. Will Waterproof ' s Lyrical 
ALoiiologue, and 7'he N'orther)i Farmer. 

Bubbled the nightingale (^^/7). Cf. note to lines 217, 218, 
canto i. 

260. Blowzed. Heated after exercise. 

254-256. And made the single jewel on her brow, etc. 
How fond Tennyson is of similes relating to the sea ! This 
simile is doubtless made of the frequent sights from the "ridge 
of a noble down." This mystic fire is called by sailors **St, 
Elmo's Fire," 



IV.] NOTES. 169 

Cf. Tempest {\. 2, 197): 

" sometime I'd divide, 
And, burn in many places; on the topmast, 
The yards, and bowsprit, would I flame distinctly, 
Then meet and join." 

Cf. Longfellow, Golden Legend : 

" Last night I saw St. Elmo's stars, 

^Yith their glimmering lanterns, all at play 

On the tops of the masts and the tips of the spars, 

And I knew we should have foul weather to-day." 

Cf. 7'//t' Day-Dream, which Mr. Stedman calls, 
"The acme of melodious and fanciful picture-making," 

261-263. Each was like a Druid rock, etc. Mr, Henry Van 
Dyke alludes to these similes as " commonplace and unpoetical 
facts dressed in elaborate verbiage." Do you agree with him ? 

264-272. Then as we came, etc. The picturesque style is 
natural to Tennyson, but he can do most excellent work with the 
chisel when the subject demands such work, 

273-339- It was not thus, etc. What does the poet mean to 
imply by making jealousy one (the second) of the causes of the 
wrecking of the Princess's venture ? 

Mr. Stopford Brooke says: " Women are more subject to these 
faults than men — not that men are naturally better, but women 
have not had the public training which men have had in the repres- 
sion of the personal and its stupidities." 

Cf, Gninevere : 

"That she is woman, whose disloyal life 
Hath wrought confusion in the Table Round," 

The speech of Lady Blanche well illustrates the oratory of poetry: 

" Well spoken, with good accent and good discretion," 

Castalies (^7j). Cf. Classical Dictionary, 



I70 THE PRINCESS. [iv. 

342-343. For this lost lamb, etc. The nature to which the 
Princess has done violence is slowly asserting its power. She 
becomes mother to Melissa. 

344-378. Thereat the lady stretch'd a vulture throat. 

Here is a more finished sketch: 

" I see the wealthy miller yet, 

His double chin, his portly size. 
And who that knew him could forget 
The busy wrinkles round his eyes? 
The slow, wise smile, that round about 

His dusty forehead drily curl'd, 
Seem'd half within, and half without. 
And full of dealings with the world." 

The Miller'' s Daughter. 

Tennyson has been accused of being weak at times in the man- 
agement of his incidents, but here is the triumph of the story- 
teller; the movement has been steady, continuous, and irresistible. 
The counter movement from without now begins, and conflict must 
result. 

The simile of the rick-burning by the hard-pressed peasantry is of 
material which the poet could easily gather in the years 1 835-1 850, 
— years full of revolt against the landlord. Cf. To Mary Boyle. 

The " two letters " symbolize the fact that the movements in 
the natural life of the time must work for or against each other — 
there can be no isolation. This is the last cause, in order of time, 
for the failure of the university. 

391-392. You hold, etc. What is the contrast between the 
father of the Princess and the father of the Prince, as revealed thus 
far in the story? 

399-448. not to pry, etc. Thus far the Prince has in no 
wise rivalled the Princess in the reader's mind ; but now by this 
speech he steps to the front, or at least by her side. 

Sphered up with Cassiopeia (■j^/?)- Cf. Classical Dic- 
tionary, Cassiopeia, 



IV.] • NOTES. 171 

Landskip {426'). Cf. Merlin and the Gleam. 

"The landskip darkened." 

Lines 444-446 remind one of the closing lines in Ulysses : 

"One equal temper of heroic hearts 
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will 
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield." 

464. And some that men were in the very halls, etc. 
" Not having seen a man for three years, they were curious to get a 
glimpse of one." — E. W. Chase. 

472-475. Fix't like a beacon tower, etc. There is no figure 
in the poem quite so intensive as this. It could come from no one 
who had not brooded intently over the various aspects of the loud- 
sounding sea. Cf. Enoch A>'den, The Voyage, The Sailor Boy, 
Sea Dreams. 

Cf. Longfellow, The Lighthouse (published 1849): 

"The sea-bird wheeling round it, with the din 
Of wings and winds and solitary cries, 
Blinded and maddened by the light within, 
Dashes himself against the glare and dies." 

477-500. What fear ye, brawlers? etc. "The old warrior 
from his ivied nook" should break the long silence, and applaud 
this dashing young leader. 

537-550- While I listened, etc. Q\. The Coming of Arthur : 
" O ye stars that shudder over me, 
O earth that soundest hollow under me, 
Vext with waste dreams." 
Cf . 'TiiJO Voices : 

" Moreover, something is or seems, 
That touches me with mystic gleams 
Like glimpses of forgotten dreams." 
549-553. I was one, etc. Cf. Merlin and the Gleam: 
" Mighty the wizard 
Who found me at sunrise 



172 THE PRINCESS. - [iv. 

Sleeping, and woke me, 
And learn'd me magic ! 
Great the master 
And sweet the magic, 
When over the valley 
In early summers, 
Over the mountain, 
On human faces, 
And all around me 
Moving to melody 
Floated the Gleam." 

In 1 85 1 Tennyson contributed some stanzas to the Keepsake 
which reflect a similar mood : 

" What time I wasted youthful hours. 
One of the shining winged powers 
Show'd me vast cliffs, with crowns of towers." 

INTERLUDE. 

This song (added in third edition) in the manuscript begins: 

" When all among the thundering drums 
Thy soldier in the battle stands," 
and ends: 

" Strike him dead for them and thee, 
Tara ta tantara ! " 

The present form is that of the fourth edition. Neither the 
interlude nor any of the songs appear earlier than the third edition, 
1850. 

The subject of this song is the influence of the family upon 
man, especially upon the soldier and sailor. Cf. The Defence of 
Lticknoxu : 

" There was a whisper among us, but only 
A whisper that past ; 
' Children and wives ' — if the tigers leap 
Into the fold unawares." 



v.] NOTES. 173 

Cf. Wordsworth, Character of the Happy Warrior: 

" He who, though thus endued as with a sense 
And faculty for storm and turbulence. 
Is yet a soul whose master-bias leans 
To homefelt pleasures and to gentle scenes ; 
Sweet images ! which, wheresoe'er he be, 
Are at his heart ; and such fidelity 
It is his darling passion to approve ; 
More brave for this, that he hath much to love." 

Tennyson once said: " For me verses have no other aim than to 
call to life nobler and better sentiments than we feel and express 
in everyday life. If they can suggest pictures worthy of an artist's 
eye, so much the better." 

Mr. Dawson gives the following version of this song from a 
volume of selections made by Tennyson, although not published in 
his collected works since 1878: 

'* Lady, let the rolling drums 
Beat to battle where thy warrior stands : 
Now thy face across his fancy comes. 
And gives the battle to his hands. 

" Lady, let the trumpets blow, 
Clasp thy little babes about thy knee: 
Now their warrior father meets the foe. 

And strikes him dead for thine and thee." 



CANTO V. 

5-9. And one, that clash'd in arms, etc. Cf. The Last 

Tournament : 

*' She ended, and the cry of a great joust 
With trumpet-blowings ran on all the ways. 
From Camelot in among the faded fields 
To furthest towers ; and everywhere the knights 
Arm'd for a day of glory before the king." 



174 THE PRINCESS. [v. 

11-14. I stood and seem'd to hear, etc. Cf. Keats : 

" And then there crept 
A little noiseless noise among the leaves, 
Born of the very sigh that silence heaves. 
O'erhead we see the jasmine and sweet brier 
And bloomy grapes laughing from green attire. 

The influence of Keats upon Tennyson is clearly seen in such 
descriptive work. 

20. Bush-bearded barons. Study Tennyson's alliteration here, 
as also in the previous lines, "light lisping leaf." 

25. Mawkin. "In the country parts of England mawkin 
means a cloth tied over a pole for sweeping out an oven, and 
thence applied to any slovenly woman." — Dawson. 

Cf. The Last Tournament: 

" For when had Lancelot uttered aught so gross 
E'en to the swineherd's inalkin in the mast." 

Cf. Pericles, iv. l : 

" Blurted at and held a malkin." 

30-34. Then some one sent, etc. Why is it that Tennyson 
speaks disparagingly of the "weird seizures; " is it for dramatic 
effect merely? 

41-42. Leapt from the dewy shoulders. 

" Now Morning from her orient chamber came, 
And her first footsteps touched a verdant hill." 

Keats, Imitation of Spenser. 

52-59. Among piled arms, etc. This reminds us of the statu- 
esque in the Idylls, where there is so much firm and delicate 
chiselling: 

" For all his face was white 
And colorless, and like the wither'd moon 
Smote by the fresh beam of the springing east ; 
And all his greaves and cuisses dash'd with drops 
Of onset. ' ' The Passing of Arthur. 



v.] NOTES. 175 

77. Live, dear lady, for your child ! This line points back- 
ward to the last song, — man's love for his own ; and forward to 
the song at the close of this canto, — woman's love for her own. 

79-100. Ah me, my babe, etc. Cf. Wordsworth's Affliction 
of Margaret : 

" To have received 
No tidings of an only child : 
To have despaired, have hoped, believed, 
And been forever more beguiled. 
Sometimes with thoughts of very bliss ! 
I catch at them and then I miss ; 
Was ever darkness like to this? " 

Cf. Wordsworth, Michael, Her Eyes are Wild, The Complaint, 
and Tennyson's Rizpah. 

They will make her hard, etc. (jy'). Cf. Dora : 

"And, now I think, he shall not have the boy, 
For he will teach him hardness, and to slight 
His mother." 

X14-115. But red-faced war has rods, etc. Cf. Canto i. %6, 
and Tennyson's war poems. 

1 19-143. How say you, war or not? It was from 1850 to 
1855 that Tennyson wrote that noble series of war poems which 
were inspired by the threatening attitude of France, the death of 
the great duke, and the Crimean War. He believed that — 

" The song that nerves a nation's heart 
Is in itself a deed." 

In The Third of February, The Ode on the Death of the Duke 
of Wellington, Defence of Lucknoiv, Charge of the Light Brigade, 
The Revenge, and Maud, we have a contrast to the sentiments of 
these lines from The Princess, yet there is no inconsistency here. 
Some critics have sought for inconsistency in Maiid, and so have 
found it, of course. One would-be poet and critic expressed what 
he thought was the public sentiment on the war spirit of the poem 
as follows : 



176 THE PRINCESS. [v. 

" Who is it clamors for war ? Is it one who is ready to fight? 

Is it one who will grasp the sword and rush on the foe with a 
shout ? 

Far from it; 'tis one of the musing mind who merely intends to 
write." 

Tennyson was no lover of war for war's sake, nor was he for 
peace at any cost. He preferred peace to ignoble war, and noble 
war to ignoble peace. 

147-159- Man is the hunter, etc. The Prince's father is a 
type not uncommon in Tennyson's poetry. He represents a medi- 
aeval idea which has much of truth in it, mixed with error enough 
to damn it. 

In the old version of A Dream of Fair IVomen^ we have: 

" In every land I thought that, more or less, 
The stronger, sterner nature overbore 
The softer." 

Cf. Ay liner'' s Field, Fdwin Morris, Locksley Hall. 

164. Yea, but, Sire, I cried, etc. The significance of this 
speech of the Prince lies in the contrast that it presents to the 
judgments of Ida. He does not judge all women alike ; she does 
not discriminate in her judgments of man. 

184-196. And she of whom you speak, etc. What a contrast 
to the gruff old king is this lovely woman ! The simile, — 

" pure as lines of green," 

is one of the most delicately wrought figures in the language. To 
what infinite pains of observation does it attest ! 
Cf . .SV. Agnes' s Fve : 

" Make Thou my spirit pure and clear 
As are the frosty skies, 
Or this first snowdrop of the year 
That in my bosom lies." 

198-205. We remember love ourself, etc. Gama is of the 
south, and is in contrast to the sturdy northman. He is good- 



v.] NOTES. 177 

natured, easy-going; he would avoid a conflict, even with his 
daughter, so he let her have her way. His respect for the Prince 
commends him to us. 

226-230. Then rode we, etc. Cf. Browning, Home Thoughts 
from Abroad : 

" Oh, to be in England now that ApriPs there, 

And whoever wakes in England sees, some morning, unaware, 
That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf 
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf. 
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough 
In England now ! " 

239-245. They made a halt, etc. Professor Iladley says of 
these lines: "We instance them as a fine exhil)ition of ' the pomp 
and circumstance of glorious war.' " 

250-255. Like those three stars, etc. Cf. Iliad, v. 5: 

*' Flash'd from his helm and buckler a bright incessant dream, 
Like summer star that burns afar, new bathed in ocean's stream." 

From Merh'ale, by DawSOX. 

Cf. Browning, Old Pictures in Florence, i. 7: 

"And washed by the morning water gold." 

269-280. But then this question, etc. The character of Arac 
impresses us at once as altogether worthy of such a sister as Ida, 
and in marked contrast to that of King Gama. 

Mr. Morton Luce says: "Arac and Ida are heroic children of 
a weakling father ; but this points to a mother unusually noble." 

284. Her that talked down the fifty wisest men. St. Cath- 
erine of Alexandria. Cf. Cyclopcvdia. 

294-300. Like to like, etc. This touch is exceedingly effec- 
tive dramatically. By the taunt the Prince escapes from the " Shad- 
ows," and stands out clear and well-defined. 

318-320. Cf. Canto i. 11 2-1 30. He is as impotent here against 
the sons as there against the widows. 



178 THE PRINCESS. [v. 

336-341. And standing like a sta-tely pine, etc. In 1830 
Tennyson and Hallam visited the Pyrenees, when the War of 
Spanish Independence was at its height, and carried money to aid 
the rebels. "A wild, bustling time we had of it," said Hallam. 

In 1861 Arthur Hugh Clough went to the Pyrenees in search of 
health, and met Tennyson and his wife. This second visit of Ten- 
nyson's revived the old memories; and he wrote //; (he J'allcy of 
Caiiteretz : 

" All along the valley, while I walked to-day, 
The two and thirty years were a mist that rolls away ; 
For all along the valley, down thy rocky bed, 
The living voice to me was as the voice of the dead. 
And all along the valley, by rock and cave and tree. 
The voice of the dead was a living voice to me." 

In his Diary, under date of Sept. 7, Clough alludes to a walk 
with Tennyson to " a sort of island between two waterfalls, with 
pines on it, of which he retained a recollection from his visit of 
thirty-one years ago, and which, moreover, furnished a simile to 
The Prhicess.'''' 

In November Clough died, and then the valley must have had 
additional sacredness in the poet's memory. 

I think it is of Clough that Tennyson speaks in The Garden at 
Sivainstoii (1870), in memory of Sir John Simeon: 

" Two dead men have I known, 
In courtesy like to thee 
Three dead men," etc. 

351-360. All on the side, etc. Q\. Pclleas and Rttarre : 

" Then blush'd and brake the morning of the jousts, 
And this was call'd ' The Tournament of Youth,' " etc. 

Tomyris (^55). Cf. Classical Dictionary, and Herodotus, i. 214. 

367-368. Of lands in which at the altar, etc. This is an 
allusion to a Russian custom of the seventeenth century, which 
symljolized subjection of women to the husband. — Dawson. 



v.] NOTES. 179 

369-370. Of living hearts that crack within the fire, etc. 
" An allusion to the Hindoo custom of burning the widow on the 
funeral pyre of her husband." — Dawson. 

397. Take not his life. It is by such touches as these that 
Tennyson has made a question, not altogether lovely in its history 
and nature, exceedingly beautiful ; and has indicated some of the 
means by which it may be solved. 

410-413. And, ever following those two crowned twins, 
etc. The English note is here evident. Cf. ^^ Von ask vie, li'hy 
tho^ ill at ease.^'' 

420-427. Our chiefest comfort is the little child, etc. What 
Psyche has suffered by the injustice of the Princess in case of the 
child is balanced by the mission of the child — to heal and cleanse, 
to stimulate the feeling of motherhood. "Whenever the plot 
thickens, the babe appears." — Dawson. 

Mr. Luce suggests that we study carefully the word " authentic " 
as related to the idea of motherhood, seen in the last four lines. 

" So dear a life your arms enfold." 

The Daisy. 

" Baby lips will laugh me down; my latest rival brings thee rest. 
Baby fingers, waxen touches, press me from the mother's breast." 

Locksley Hall. 

"A maiden babe, which Arthur pitying took. 
Then gave it to his queen to rear ; the Queen 
But coldly acquiescing, in her white arms 
Received, and after, loved it tenderly, 
And named it Nestling ; so forgot herself 
A moment and her cares." 

The Last Toiwnament. 

434-435. When the man wants weight, etc. Dawson quotes 
from Sexes Throughout Xattcre (Blackwell) as follows: "When- 
ever brilliantly colored male birds have acquired something of 
maternal habits, tasks, and impulses, conversely, the females seem 



i8o THE PRINCESS. [v. 

always to have acquired some counterbalancing weight of male 
character." 

435-441. But this is fixt, etc. These lines should not be 
passed over carelessly, nor the thought they contain be dismissed 
as antiquated because they are uttered by King Gama. They un- 
doubtedly contain much that would cause debate between partisans, 
but do they not appeal to every man and woman who knows the 
meaning of history ? In a recent sermon by Rev. Lyman Abbott, 
one of a series on Ch)-isi^s Teaching on Social Topics (vii.), I find 
the following, which bears directly upon this question. It is all 
the more interesting as it is a half-century removed from the time 
The Princess was written. 

"The normal and divine order is the order in which the husband 
is the head of the household. Do not misunderstand me. I am 
not affirming that man is superior to woman. It has been often 
affirmed, and I repudiate it with indignation. There is no question 
of superiority or inferiority. The question is of headship, not of 
superiority. It is man who is to do the work and take the respon- 
sibilities, in order that woman may minister to love and life. That 
is the reason I do not believe in woman's suffrage. . . . Man 
should be the defender and man should be the burden-bearer. I 
cannot altogether look with enthusiasm upon the new era in which 
women are rushing into every kind of employment, and lowering 
the wages of men by doing men's work. I would not close the 
door against them, nor shut them out from any vocation ; I would 
give them the largest liberty, all the liberty I claim for myself ; 
but, fellow-men, you and I, with our strong arms, ought to fight 
life's battles, and win life's bread, and leave the women free from 
the burden of bread-winning and battling, that they may minister 
to the higher life of faith, hope, love." (Feb. 3, 1896.) 

In an essay which shows the utmost sympathy with every 
advance woman has made along those lines in which her nature 
could expand naturally and healthily. Professor John Stuart Blackie 
says: " In the main it always was, and always must be, true, that 
even in the administration of the family affairs the man is the head 
of the woman ; let her be content to have the heart, which is the 



v.] NOTES. i8i 

soul, and the hands which work the grace of domestic economy ; 
but outside this sphere, in the clamorous atmosphere of public life, 
or the platform of political wrangling or ecclesiastical thunder, the 
seldomer she appears the better." 

Ruskin says, " Man is eminently the doer, the creator, the dis- 
coverer, the defender. The woman's power is for rule, not for 
battle ; and her intellect is for sweet ordering, arrangement, and 
decision." And again he says: "You cannot think that the 
buckling on of the knight's armor by his lady's hand was a mere 
caprice of romantic fashion. It is the type of eternal truth that 
the soul's armor is never well set to the heart unless a woman's 
hand has braced it." 

Cf. Lovers Labor ^s Lost, act iv., scene iii. : 

"From women's eyes this doctrine I derive, 
They sparkle still the right Promethean fire ; 
They are the books, the arts, the academies, 
That show, contain, and nourish all the world." 

468-470. I seem'd to move in old memorial tilts, etc. 

Mrs. Anne Thackeray Ritchie says of the early life of the Tenny- 
son boys: "They had beyond most children that wondrous toy 
which some people call imagination. The boys played great games 
like Arthur's knights ; they were champions and warriors defend- 
ing a stone heap, or again they would set up opposing camps with 
a king in the midst of each. Perhaps as the day wore on they 
became romancers, leaving the jousts deserted. When dinner-time 
came, and they all sat round the table, each in turn put a chapter 
of his story underneath the potato-bowl — long, endless stories, 
chapter after chapter, diffuse, absorbing, unending, as are the his- 
tories of real life. Alfred used to tell a story which lasted for 
months, and which was called, "The Old Horse!" Cf. Fa)-, 
Far A7vay. 

Cf . T/ie Ancient Sage . 

" On me when boy there came," etc. 
472-530. Empanoplied and plumed, etc. 



i82 THE PRINCESS. [vi. 

Mr. Stedman says of these lines: "The tournament scene, at 
the close of the fifth book, is the most vehement and rapid passage 
to be found in the whole range of Tennyson's poetry. By an 
approach to the Homeric swiftness, it presents a contrast to the 
laborious and faulty movement of much of his narrative verse." 

Of lines 510-519, Professor Hadley says: "The overwhelm- 
ing onset of the Prince Arac is described in verses not unfit for the 
exploits of divine Achilles." 



CANTO VI. 



"This song has received but one verbal alteration from its form 

in the manuscript, where watching, read whisperitig.'''' — Waugh. 

Mr. Dawson says that this song is evidently adapted from one 

in selections published in 1865, and which is not in the poet's 

published works since 1878: 

" Home they brought him slain with spears. 
They brought him home at even- fall ; 
All alone she sits and hears 
Echoes in his empty hall, 

Sounding on the morrow. 

" The sun peeped in from open field, 
The boy began to leap and prance. 
Rode upon his father's lance. 
Beat upon his father's shield, 

' Oh hush, my joy, my sorrow ! ' " 
Cf. Scott, Lay of f lie Last ULinstrel, canto i.: 
" But o'er her warrior's bloody bier 
The Ladye dropped nor flower nor tear ! 
Vengeance deep-brooding o'er the slain 
Had locked the source of softer woe, 
And burning pride and high disdain 
Forbade the rising tear to flow ; 



VI.] NOTES. 183 

Until, amid his sorrowing clan, 

Her son lisped from the nurse's knee, 

' And if I live to be a man, 
My father's death revenged shall be.' 

Then fast the mother's tears did seek 

To dew the infant's kindling cheek." 

How many a mother has had courage and fortitude infused into 
her life by the fact that she had a child for which to work ! There 
is no more significant tribute to the truth of the Christian senti- 
ment, "A little child shall lead them," than is to be found in this 
poem. 

Cf. Childhood in Literature and Art. — H. E. Scudder. 

"The seasons change, the winds they shift and veer; 
The grass of yesteryear 

Is dead; the birds depart, the groves decay: 
Empires dissolve and disappear : 
Song passes not away." William Watson. 

15. With Psyche's babe in arm. Mr. Dawson says that this 
expression was ridiculed by the early reviewers, who compared it 
to the "lance in rest" of the romances of chivalry. Some of 
these early criticisms the poet adopted, but he let this line remain 
as at first. 

Cf. The Palace of Art : 

" Or the maid-mother by a crucifix. 
In tracts of pasture sunny-warm, 
Beneath branch-work of costly sardonyx, 
Sat smiling, babe in ar?n.'^ 

16. Dame of Lapidoth. Cf. Jitdges iv. 4. 

17-42. Our enemies have fallen, etc. While this song lacks 
the lilt of the others because of the somewhat difficult figure which 
the poet tries to carry through it, yet the last stanza is a marvel of 
strength, beauty, and suggestiveness. 



i84 THE PRINCESS. [vi. 

47. Blanch'd. Conspicuous. 

53-57. Let them not lie in the tents, etc. Peace hath her 
victories no less than war. Cf. In the Children 's Hospital, iii. 

61-66. Some COWPd, etc. Cf. the pictures in The Gardener's 
Daughter : 

" The daughters of the year, 
One after one, thro' that still garden pass'd: 
Each garlanded with her peculiar flower 
Danced into light, and died into the shade." 

Tremulous isles of light (65-). "Spots of sunshine coming 
through the leaves, and seeming to slide from one to the other as 
the procession of girls 'moves under the shade.'' " 

Tennyson to Mr. Dawson. 

93-99. At which the king, etc. Tennyson is very fond of 
such studies as this, l)y which the present is linked with the past. 
Cf. Will Waterproof ''s Lyrical Monologue : 

" I pledge her silent at the board; 

Her gradual fingers steal 
And touch upon the master-chord 

Of all I felt and feel. 
Old wishes, ghosts of broken plans, 

And phantom hopes assemble ; 
And that child-heart within the man's 

Begins to move and tremble." 

Cf. Lancelot and Elaine : 

" Her memory from old habit of the mind 
Went slipping back upon the golden days 
In which she saw him first." 

Cf . The Golden Supper : 

" And Love mourn'd long, and sorrow'd after Hope ; 
At last she sought out Memory, and they trod 
The same old paths where Love had walked with Hope, 
And Memory fed the soul of Love with tears." 



VI.] NOTES. 185 

loo-iii. Till understanding all the foolish work, etc. Cf. 
The Two Voices : 

" 'Tis life, whereof our nerves are scant, 
O life, not death, for which we pant* 
More life and fuller that I want." 

I14-171. So those two foes, etc. There is nothing in the 
poem so dramatic both in action and in situation as is this episode. 
There is nothing in Tennyson's dramas that approaches this for 
plastic and picturesque work, for pathos and for power. 

186. In the dead prime. Early morning. — Dawson. 

205-206. The woman is so hard, etc. Is it true that erring 
woman gets less sympathy from woman than from man ? 

In llie Scai'let Letter Hawthorne gives us the conversation of a 
group of women who are discussing the sentence imposed by men 
upon Hester Prynne. " Goodwives," said a hard-featured dame of 
fifty, "I'll tell you a piece of my mind. It would be greatly for 
the public behoof if we women, being of mature age and church- 
members in good repute, should have the handling of such male- 
factors as this Hester Prynne. If the hussy stood up for judgment 
before us five that are now here in a knot together, would she 
come off with such a sentence as the worshipful magistrates have 
awarded ? Marry, I trow not ! " 

314-317. Fling our doors wide, etc. Cf. Browning's Saul : 

"With that stoop of the soul which in bending upraises it too." 

343-348. When armor clash'd, etc. Cf. The Passing of 
Arthur : 

" Then drew he forth the brand Excalibur, 
And o'er him, drawing it, the winter moon. 
Brightening the skirts of a long cloud, ran forth 
And sparkled keen with frost against the hilt ; 
For all the haft twinkled with diamond sparks, 
Myriads of topaz lights, and jacinth work 
Of subtlest jewellery." 



i86 THE PRINCESS. [vii. 

This poem better than almost any other except the Idylls of the 
King, shows us the unflagging activity of pictorial power, the 
imagination eager to create sights and sounds. 



CANTO VII. 



It is the function of the intercalary songs to strike the keynote 
of each succeeding canto, and the perfection with which they do 
this is a triumph of the art. 

Charles Kingsley says: "The songs prepare us for the triumph 
of that art by which he makes us, after all, love the heroine whom 
he at first taught us to hate and despise, till we see that the 
naughtiness is after all one that must be kissed and not whipped 
out of her, and look on smiling while she repeats, with Prince 
Harry of old, ' not in sackcloth and ashes, but in new silk and 
old sack.' " 

Mr. Dawson says: "Too much for the resolution of the Prin- 
cess are these influences sweeping under the surface motives of 
human nature with irresistible sway. In her apparent defeat she 
rises to the supreme height of her womanhood." 

In the line : 

"Ask me no more; thy fate and mine are sealed," 

we have the utterance of that which was from everlasting to ever- 
lasting — that which the noble Arthur foresaw was the 
" Power in this dark land to lighten it, 
And power in this dead world to make it live." 
The cause of the destruction of the Table Round is beautifully 
revealed by Coventry Patmore : 

" Ah wasteful woman ! she who may 
On her sweet self set her own price, 
Knowing he cannot choose but pay — 
How has she cheapened Paradise ! 



VII.] NOTES. 187 

How given for naught her priceless gift, 
How spoiled the bread and spilled the wine, 
Which, spent with due, respective thrift, 
Had made brutes men, and men divine ! " 

There are but slight changes in this song. In the early manu- 
script the third line reads : 

" With fold on fold," 
and the tenth line reads : 

" I strive against the stream, but all in vain." 
13. Let the great river take me to the main. Cf. 
" He heard the deep behind him and a cry before." 
" Bear me to the margin." 

" The speck that bare the king 
Down that long water opening on the deep." 

The Passing of Arthur. 
" From deep to deep, to where we saw 
A great ship lift her shining sides." 

In Meinoriaai, ciii. 
" When that which drew 
From out the boundless deep, 
Turns again home." 

Crossing the Bar. 

"From the great deep to the great deep 
They bore him." 

The Com ing of A rth ur. 

In 1842 Carlyle wrote: "Alfred Tennyson alone of this time 
has proved singing in our curt English language to be possible." 
Again he says: " His voice is musically metallic, fit for loud 
laughter and piercing wail and all that may lie between." 

" Captains and conquerors leave a little dust, 
And kings a dubious legend of their reign : 
The swords of Caesars, they are less than rust: 
The poet doth remain." WiLUAM Watson. 



i88 THE PRINCESS. [vii. 

8-13. They sang, they read, etc. 

This is a beautiful illustration of the lines in /// iMe/noriam, xxxii. 

"Thrice blest whose lives are faithful prayers, 
Whose loves in higher love endure ; 
What souls possess themselves so pure, 
Or is there blessedness like theirs? " 

Again, when speaking of Ivjiowlcdge, he says (cxiv.): 

" Let her know her place; 
She is the second, not the first. 

A higher hand must make her mild. 
If all be not in vain; and guide 
Her footsteps, moving side by side 

With wisdom, like the younger child." 

14-16. But sadness on the soul of Ida fell. Cf. 77i. Palace 
of Art for the condition of one 

" That did love Beauty only. Beauty seen 
In all varieties of mould and mind, 
And Knowledge for its beauty; or if Good, 
Good only for its beauty, seeing not 
That Beauty, Good, and Knowledge are three sisters ' 
That doat upon each other, friends to man, 
Living together under the same roof. 
And never can be sunder'd without tears." 

19-26. Void was her use, etc: 

"A spot of dull stagnation, without light 
Or power of movement, seem'd my soul, 
'Mid onward-sloping motions infinite 
Making for one sure goal. 

A still salt pool, lock'd in with bars of sand ; 

Left on the shore ; that hears all night 
The plunging seas draw backward from the land 

Their moon-led waters white. ' ' ^.^^^ ^^^^^^^^ ^^^^.^_ 



VII.] NOTES. 189 

In a letter to Mr. Dawson, Tennyson says: "This figure was 
suggested by a coming storm as seen from the top of Snowdon. 
There was a period in my life when, as an artist, Turner for in- 
stance, takes rough sketches of landscape, etc., in order to work 
them eventually into some great picture, so I was in the habit of 
chronicling in four or five words or more whatever might strike 
me as picturesque in nature." 

It is to the everlasting glory of England, Scotland, and Wales 
that the sights and sounds of her natural history are preserved by 
her great poets and artists for a life beyond life. Wordsworth, in 
the fourteenth book of the Prelude (35-62), gives us a magnifi- 
cently Turneresque sketch from Snowdon just before sunrise : 

"As I looked up. 
The Moon hung naked in a firmament 
Of azure without cloud, and at my feet 
Rested a silent sea of hoary mist. 
A hundred hills their dusky backs upheaved 
All over this still ocean; and beyond. 
Far, far beyond, the solid vapors stretched. 
In headlands, tongues, and promontory shapes, 
Into the main Atlantic, that appeared 
To dwindle, and give up its majesty. 
Usurped upon far as the sight could reach. 
Not so the ethereal vault ; encroachment none 
Was there, nor loss ; only the inferior stars 
Had disappeared, or shed a fainter light 
In the clear presence of the full-orbed Moon." 
" And such a mountain as Snowdon is! We have nothing that 
comes within a hundred miles of him. We went to that beautiful 
waterfall on the way up Snowdon ; had a long look at the two 
beautiful lakes in the moonlight." — Matthew Arnold, Letters, 
vol. i., p. 274. 

Cf. Homer, Iliad, iv. 275, 

*' As when a goatherd from some hill peak sees a cloud coming 
across the deep with the blast of the west wind behind it, and to 



I90 THE PRINCESS. [vii. 

him, being as he is afar, it seems blacker even as pitch, as it goes 

along the deep bringing a great whirlwind." — Churton Collins. 

27-29. So blacken'd all her world, etc. Cf . The Palace of Art : 

" And death and life she hated equally 
And nothing saw, for her despair, 
But dreadful time, dreadful eternity. 
No comfort anywhere." 

" So when four years were wholly finished. 
She threw her royal robes away. 
' Make me a cottage in the vale,' she said, 
' Where I may mourn and pray.' " 
Cf. Ayl liter's Field: 

" So that the gentle creature, shut from all 
Her charitable use, and face to face 
With twenty months of silence, slowly lost, 
Nor greatly cared to lose her hold on life." 
Cf. T/ie Two Voices: 

" 'Tis life whereof our nerves are scant, 
O life, not death, for which we pant ; 
More life, and fuller, that I want." 
Cf . Wordsworth, On Seeing Peek Castle in a Storm : 
" So once it would have been, — 'tis so no more ; 
I have submitted to a new control, 
A power is gone, which nothing can restore ; 
A deep distress hath humanized my soul." 

Cf. Browning, Saul: 

"As thy love is discovered almighty, almighty be proved 
Thy power, that exists with and for it, of being beloved." 

30-31. And morn by morn the lark, etc. The nightingale 
and the skylark are the poets' birds. Cf. Shelley, To a Skylark: 

** Higher still and higher 

From the earth thou springest 
Like a cloud of fire; 



VII.] NOTES. 191 

The blue deep thou wingest, 
And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest." 
Cf. Wordsworth, To a Skylark : 

" Joyous as morning 
Thou art laughing and scorning; 
Thou hast a nest for thy love and thy rest, 
And, though little troubled with sloth. 
Drunken Lark ! Thou would'st be loth 
To be such a traveller as I. 
Happy, happy liver. 

With a soul as strong as a mountain river 
Pouring out praise to the Almighty Giver." 
Tennyson, in Queen Mary, in a graceful tribute to Sir Thomas 
W^yatt, alludes to the two birds : 

" Courtier of many courts, he loved the more 

His own gray towers, plain life, and lettered peace, 
To read and rhyme in solitary fields, 
The lark above, the nightingale below, 
And answer them in song." 
Cf. jNIilton, To the Nightingale : 

"O Nightingale, that on yon bloomy spray 

Warblest at eve, when all the woods are still," etc. 
31-39. But I, etc. a. The Mystic : 

*' He, often lying broad awake, and yet 
Remaining from the body, and apart 
In intellect and power and will, hath heard 
Time flowing in the middle of the night. 
And all things creeping to a day of doom." 
40-54. But Psyche tended Florian, etc. Is there any pic- 
ture in English literature more beautiful than this ? Jealousy has 
departed, and in its place comes Love. 

" In that hour 
From out my sullen heart a power 
Broke, like the rainbow from the shower, 



192 THE PRINCESS. [vii. 

To feel, altho' no tongue can prove, 
That every cloud, that spreads above 
And veileth love, itself is love." 

The Tzuo Voices. 

The last three lines reveal the eye of the scientist and the ima- 
gination of the poet united, as Wordsworth said they might be 
united in a great poet. " The impassioned expression which is in 
the countenance of all science " is here clothed upon with the 
language of the poet. Aristotle has come to the banquet of Plato. 

69-71. Love in the sacred halls, etc. 
" Love took up the harp of life, and smote on all the chords with 
might; 

Smote the chord of self, that, trembling, pass'd in music out of 
sight." 

100-103. Love, like an Alpine harebell, etc. Ci. Mattd : 

" A livelier emerald twinkles on the grass, 
A purer sapphire melts into the sea." 
And in that lovely song in which nature is charged with the 
feeling of the lover: 

" There has fallen a splendid tear 
From the passion flower at the gate. 
She is coming, my dove, my dear : 
She is coming, my life, my fate; 
The red rose cries, ' She is near, she is near !' 
And the white rose weeps, ' She is late; ' 
The larkspur listens — ' I hear, I hear ; ' 
And the lily whispers, ' I wait.' " 

On one occasion, as Tennyson was walking with James T. Fields 
on the downs by moonlight, he dropped on his knees in the grass, 
exclaiming, '* Violets, man, violets ! Smell them, and you'll sleep 
the better." 

Nature is used by the poets in a great variety of ways, the ear- 
liest of which is perhaps that childlike delight in all things out-of- 
doors, as seen in Chaucer's " Prologue," 77ie Legend of Good 
lVo?ne)i. 



VII.] NOTES. 193 

" When comen xS the May, 
There in my bed there daweth me no day 
That I n'am up and walking in the mead, 
To see this flower against the sunne spread. 
When it upriseth early in the morrow; 
That blissful sight softeneth all my sorrow. 
And down on knees anon right I me set, 
And as I could this fresshe flow'r I grette. 
Kneeling always till it unclosed was 
Upon the smale, softe, sweete gras." 

Nature is used by many poets merely as a background. Virgil's 
description of the harbor where the fleet of ^Eneas found shelter is 
a good illustration of this: 

" The spot, an inlet deep. An island there 

With outstretched arms makes port, where every wave 
From seaward breaks and faints in gentle ebb." 

yEneid, Book I. 

Homer, in Odyssey, gives a similar description of the course of 
Ulysses after escaping from the Sirens: 

" There is a pile 
Of beetling rocks where roars the mighty surge 
Of dark-eyed Amphitrite." 

Again, nature may be selected because of some event associated 
with the place. This use is seen in the old ballads, and in Scott : 

" Ettricke Foreste is a feir foreste, 
In it grows manie a semelie tree ; 
There's hart and hynd, and dae and rae, 
And a' wild bestis grete plentie." 

Poets have often gone to nature when greatly depressed, or when 
in a mood of joyousness, and have found her in sympathy with 
them. This treatment of nature is common in Tennyson. In his 
great works he never merely describes nature, nor does he ever 
reveal a life in nature ; but he makes nature and man reflect each 
other's moods. 



194 THE PRINCESS. [vii. 

Break, break, break, gives us one mood, and Crossing the Bar an- 
other; but in all of Tennyson's long poems both moods are present, 
especially in I'he Two Voices, The Princess, and /;/ JMemoriam. 

Still again nature may be regarded by itself, apart from man, 
as the subject for a picture. This use of nature is comparatively 
recent ; it dates from the time of Thomson and Allan Ramsay, 
and is one of the delightful elements of aJl poetry since that time. 
Cf. Shelley, Mont Blanc : 

" Ravine of Arve — dark, deep ravine — 
Thou many-colored, many-voiced vale. 
Over whose pines, and crags, and caverns sail 
Fast cloud shadows and sunbeams ; awful scene, 
Where Power in likeness of the Arve comes down 
From the ice gulphs that gird his secret throne." 

This may be called the poetry of " natural magic," but a 
higher type still is what Mr. Arnold calls the type of "moral 
profundity." "Poetry interprets in two ways," he says; "it 
interprets by expressing with magical felicity the physiognomy and 
movement of the outward world, and it interprets by expressing 
with inspired conviction the ideas and laws of the inward world of 
man's moral and spiritual nature." Nature to many poets has 
been but the visible garment of God. In this realm Wordsworth 
is the High Priest. Wordsworth's Apocalypse is clearest in parts 
of the Prelude, and the Excursion ; but his greatest revelation in 
any single poem is in Tintern Abbey : 

" I have felt 
A presence that disturbs me with the joy 
Of elevated thoughts: a sense sublime 
Of something far more deeply interfused, 
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
And the round ocean and the living air, 
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man; 
A motion and a spirit, that impels 
All thinking things, all objects of all thought, 
And rolls through all things." 



VII.] NOTES. 195 

Cf. Stopford Brooke, Theology in the English Poets (Words- 
worth) ; Tennyson, His Art^ and Relation to Modern Life, chap- 
ter XV. The Xatiire Poetry, J. C. Shairp, in Poetic Interpretation 
of N'atnre. 

109. Oppian law. The Oppia Lex was passed A.u.c. 540, 
when Hannibal was in Italy ; and it required that no woman should 
have above half an ounce of gold on her person; that she should 
not wear gay colors, nor ride in a carriage within a mile of any city 
or town. When the war was over the women demanded that the 
law be repealed. Cato opposed the repeal. Cf. Classical Dic- 
tionary ; Lizy, 34, I ; Tacitus Annals, 3, 33. 

112. Hortensia. Daughter of the orator Hortensius. She 
advocated the repeal of the tax upon Roman matrons in the second 
triumvirate. Cf . Classical Dictionary. 

146. Her falser self slipt from her like a robe. There is no 

subject upon which our poet dwells so long and lovingly as that 
of the evolution of the higher nature from the lower. We see it 
in the Palace of Art, an early type ; and in Guinevere, a later 
type. Everywhere is revealed the strength and delicacy of this 
beautiful and vigorous soul. 
His Muse — 
" Desires no isles of the blest, no quiet seats of the just, 
To rest in a golden grove, or to bask in a summer's sky, 
Give her the wages of going on, and not to die." 
148. Than in her mould that other. Venus, whose Greek 
name was Aphrodite, from a.<i;>^o^, " foam," because she was born 
from the spray of the ocean. Hesiod, llieog., 196. 
" Idalian Aphrodite beautiful, 
Fresh as the foam, new-bathed in Paphian wells." 

CEnone. 
1 61-174. Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white, etc. 
Mr. Stopford Brooke calls this song "the palace song of love, so 
full is it with the rich and lovely things which belong to the royal 
gardens of the earth when night, in a clear sky, has fallen on 
them." 



196 THE PRINCESS. [vii. 

The lily and the rose among flowers occupy the same place in 
Tennyson's poetry as do the lark and the nightingale among birds. 
In that equally matchless lyric in Maud (xxii.), the whole of which 
should be read with this, we have : 

" The slender acacia would not shake 
One long milk-bloom on the tree; 
The white lake-blossom fell into the lake 
As the pimpernel dozed on the lea; 
• But the rose was awake all night for your sake, 

Knowing your promise to me ; 
The lilies and roses were all awake, 
They sighed for the dawn and thee." 

Tennyson has done for English literature what Theocritus did 
for the Greek, — created the idyllic. At a time when the Alexan- 
drian was scientific and philosophic, Theocritus turned attention to 
the sights and sounds in nature, and embodied these in songs that 
captivated the tired and troubled wayfarer. In a similar period in 
English history, when poetry was unhealthily introspective and 
meditative, Tennyson revived the simple and natural aspects of 
common things. How lovely this work is can be seen only by a 
careful study of all his noble pastorals. Cf. Symond's Greek Poets, 
vol. ii., chap. xx. 

177-205, Come down, maid, etc. This small, sweet idyl 
illustrates, as did the last, " the artlessness which only art can 
know; " it is the gem of them all. It is an imitation of the 
invitation of Polyphemus to Galatea. Cyclops (Theocritus, xi. 
42-49, 60-66). Mr. Stedman says : 

" Never were the antique and the modern feeling more finely 
contrasted ; the one clear, simple, childlike, perfect (in the Greek), 
as regards melody and tone ; the other nobler, more intellectual, 
the antique body with the modern soul. The substitution of the 
mountains for the sea, as the haunt of the beloved nymph, is the 
laureate's only departure from the material employed by Theoc- 
ritus : 



VII.] NOTES. 197 

" Come thou to me, and thou shalt have no worse; 
Leave the green sea to stretch itself to shore / 
More sweetly shalt thou pass the night with me 
In yonder cave ; for laurels cluster there, 
And slender-pointed cypresses ; and there 
Is the dark ivy, the sweet fruited vine ; 
There the cool water, that from shining snows 
Thick-wooded ^tna sends, a draught for gods. 
Who these would barter for the sea and waves? 

There are oak fagots and unceasing fire 

Beneath the ashes. . . . 

Now will I learn to swim that I may see 
What pleasure thus to dwell in water depths 
Thoufindest! Nay, but Galatea^ come! 

Come thence, and having come, forget henceforth. 

As I (who tarry here) to seek thy home ! 

And mayest thou love with me to feed the flocks 

And milk them, and to press the cheese, with me 

Curdling their milk and rennet." 

J. A. Symonds, in his Greek Poets, vol. ii., chap, xx., says : 

" ' Come down, O maid ' transfers with perfect taste the Greek 
idyllic feeling to Swiss scenery ; it is a fine instance of new wine 
being successfully poured into old bottles, for nothing could be 
fresher, and not even the Thalysia is sweeter." 

{i8g.) This line has troubled the commentators, but the allu- 
sion seems to be in harmony with the central idea, — that Love is 
lowly. Mr. Dawson says: This seems to be a description of the 
peaks, or horns, of the Alps before sunrise. 

{20^-207.) Charles Kingsley asks : "Who, after three such 
lines, will talk of English as a harsh and clumsy language ? Who 
. cannot hear in them a rapid rippling of the water, the stately calm- 
ness of the wood-dove's note, and in the repetition of short syllables 
and soft liquids in the last line the — 

* Murmuring of innumerable bees' ? " 



198 THE PRINCESS. [vii. 

How Tennyson can have attained the prodigal fulness of 
thought and imagery which distinguishes this poem, and especially 
the last canto, without his style ever becoming overloaded, seldom 
even confused, is perhaps one of the greatest marvels of the whole 
production. 

Two verses of Timlnictoo, Tennyson's Cambridge prize poem, 
remind us of these : 

" Listenest the lowly music flowing from 
Th' illimitable years." 

220-230. She pray'd me, etc. The fundamental truth here is 
not so much the failure of the Princess as it is the fact that 

" The woman's cause is man's ; they rise or sink 
Together." 

The individuality of each must be maintained in an atmosphere 
of reciprocal activity, but not necessarily in an atmosphere of like 
activity ; that would be to rob both of their priceless heritage of 
like in difference. 

234-238. Till notice of a change, etc. The delicacy and 
simplicity of this figure is surpassingly beautiful in its symbolism of 
the dawn of Love. 

239-258. Blame not thyself, etc. The revelations of the last 
half century have only served to make these ideas more far-reach- 
ing. All that education has done, or can do, will but intensify the 
force of these vital truths. 

"They govern, or ought to govern," says Stopford Brooke, 
" the whole question of the future position of womanhood in a 
better society than that in which we live. They do not govern the 
position of the life of womanhood at present. The prejudices both 
of men and women are against their full development." 

Tennyson has surely done here what very early in his poetic 
career he insisted was the function of the poet to do : 

"Thus truth was multiplied on truth, the world 
Like one great garden show'd. 



VII.] NOTES. 199 

And tliro' the wreaths of floating dark upcurl'd 
Rare sunrise flow'd." 

For she that out of Lethe, etc. (^^j). Cf. Wordsworth: 

" Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting." 

Ode on Intimations of Ivunortality. 

*' As old mythologies relate, 
Some draught of Lethe might await 
The slipping thro' from state to state." 

I'ke Tzoo Foices. 

" How fares it with the happy dead? 
For here the man is more and more; 
But he forgets the days before 
God shut the doorways of his head." 

In Alemoriam, xliv. 

Stays all the fair young planets (^48). The symbolism here 
is that of the mother's influence on the child, woman's upon the 
race. Tennyson everywhere prophesies that the goal can be won 
only by those who possess the sana mens in the sano corpore ; that 
the prize is to him who has the power of staying in the contest until 
the final heats, and that whatever tends to weaken the physical 
will, in the long run, weaken the other natures. Wisdom lies in 
the happy adjustment of man's various natures — the physical, the 
intellectual, the moral. 

259-280, For woman is not undevelopt man, etc. It is in 
this speech of the Prince more than in any equal number of verses 
elsewhere that we find the heart of Tennyson as it beats to the 
mighty symphony of Humanity. To this noble ideal he is always 
paying tribute, from it he never swerves. He is both prophet and 
sweet singer. In GLnone he has said : 

" Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control, 
These three alone lead life to sovereign power." 

The fundamental idea in the poet's work is that man may be 



20O THE PRINCESS. [vii. 

gentle without being effeminate, and that woman may be noble 
without being masculine. In Hallani he saw 

" Manhood fused with female grace 

In such a sort, the child wouM twine 
A trustful hand, unask'd, in thine, 
And find his comfort in thy face ; 

All these have been, and thee mine eyes 
Have look'd on." 

It is of such types that King Arthur is created. 

Dawson says of these lines: " This thought is the undertone of 
the poem. It is like the strain that runs through the grand opera. 
Struck in the overture, it recurs again and again, and haunts us 
with one dominant melody." If we were disposed to treat the 
early stanzas lightly, now that we see their relation to the whole, 
we judge them by the conclusion, not the conclusion by them. 

Mr. Stopford Brooke says: "In our complex and crowded 
society there are thousands of women who have no home, who are 
not wives and mothers, but who are hungry to become themselves 
in the life and movement of the whole. The work of the world 
lies open to woman to do in a different way from man, but with 
the same ends, and in the same cause, — the cause of the happi- 
ness, the goodness, and the love of humanity." 

281-289. Dear, but let us type them now, etc. The same 
year in which Tennyson published The Priiiccss, the Italian patriot, 
Giuseppe Mazzini, wrote: "Like two distinct branches springing 
from the same trunk, man and woman are varieties springing from 
the common basis, — Humanity. There is no inequality between 
them. 



"They fulfil different functions in Humanity ; but these functions 
are equally sacred, equally manifestations of that Thought of God 
which has made the soul of the universe." 

Cf. Browning, ]Vanting is — What? 



VII.] NOTES. 20I 

"Come then, complete incompletion, O Comer, 
Pant through the blueness, perfect the summer ! 
Breathe but one breath 
Rose-beauty above, 
And all that was death 
Grows life, grows love, 
Grows love ! ' ' 

290-291. A dream, etc, Cf. Canto i. 155-164. 

292-312. Alone, I said, etc. We are no longer in doubt as 
to the source of Tennj'son's ideal of womanhood, wifehood, 
motherhood. 

"The poet's mother was of a sweet and tender disposition. A 
story is told of village roughs who traded on her gentleness by 
beating their dogs within hearing of the Rectory windows in hope 
of a ' tip ' to induce them to spare the unfortunate victims." 

A. Waugh. 

Cf. Milton, Paradise Lost, viii. 546-559. 

"Yet when I approach 
Her loveliness, so absolute she seems 
And in herself complete, so well to know 
Her own, that what she wills to do or say 
Seems wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best. 
All higher knowledge in her presence falls 
Degraded ; Wisdom in discourse with her 
Loses discountenanced, and like Folly shows; 
Authority and Reason on her wait. 
As one intended first, not after made 
Occasionally ; and to consummate all, 
Greatness of mind and nobleness their seats 
Build in her loveliest, and create an army 
About her, as a guard angelic, placed." 

Cf. Wordsworth's tribute to his mother, Prelude, v. 266-293. 

" She, not falsely taught, 
Fetching her goodness rather from times past, 



202 THE PRINCESS. [vii. 

Than shaping novelties for times to come, 
Had no presumption ..... 

. Not from faculties more strong 
Than others have, but from the times, perhaps. 
And spot in which she lived, and through a grace 
Of modest meekness, simple-mindedness, 
A heart that found benignity and hope. 
Being itself benign." 

*' It is through the love of such a woman that a man accom- 
plishes his manhood. The emancipated woman is no heroine to 
the poet, he knows a better." — A. Waugh. 

" No higher work in the world exists than that of motherhood, 
forming children into true and loving men and women." 

Stopford Brooke. 
317-319- I seem a mockery to myself, etc. Cf. Guinevere : 
" Is there none 
Will tell the king I love him tho' so late? 
Now — ere he goes to the great battle? none : 
Myself must tell him in that purer life. 
But now it were too daring. Ah, my God, 
What might I not have made of thy fair world. 
Had I but loved thy highest creature here? " 

339-345- My wife, my life ! we will walk this world, 

etc. These lines have a special significance when we consider the 
happy domestic life of our poet. Lady Tennyson was essentially a 
home-loving wife and mother, and as in this month (August, 1896), 
she passed — 

" Thro' those dark gates across the wild," 
to meet him whose loves and hopes were one with hers, we natu- 
rally think of that life which she lived with him for nearly a half 
century, in a home sheltered from the impertinent curiosity of a 
too curious public. Allusions to her in Tennyson's poetry are 
characterized by his singularly happy reserve as to all matters of 
his home life, 



VII.] NOTES. 203 

"Dear, near and true — no truer Time himself 
Can prove you, tho' he makes you evermore 
Dearer and nearer." 

Dedication to Enoch Ardcn. 

"O Love, what hours were thine and mine, 
In lands of palm and southern pine; 

In lands of palm, of orange-blossom, 
Of olive, aloe, and maize and vine." 

The Daisy. 

The following tribute by Canon Rawnsley to the late Lady Ten- 
nyson is peculiarly interesting from the fact that it was in the 
vicarage of his father that Tennyson was married to Miss Emily 
Selwood. 

"The Poet went — his Pilot at the bar 

Gave him God-speed and turned toward the land 
Where lone upon the shore, with waving hand, 
Stood one who followed still her guiding star 
And watched it mount to heaven. Tho' sundered far, 
Its glory sent such gladness to the strand 
She waited patient, till the great command 
Came calling her to where the immortals are. 

Oh ! sweet the memory of the Lincoln lane, 
And sweet the joy of Shiplake's marriage-bell. 

Sweet, happy hours in Aldworth's glade of pine, 
Or that loose-ordered garden known so well, 
But sweeter far, beyond all touch of pain, 
To feel thy love indissolubly thine ! " 

In The Gardener'' s Daughter and hi Meinoriani we have the 
two types of love to be found in Tennyson, — the love of man for 
a maid, and the love of man for man. 

" Such a lord is Love, 
► And Beauty such a mistress of the world." 

The Gardener'' s Daughter. 



204 THE PRINCESS. [vii. 

" Love is and was my Lord and King, 
And in his presence I attend 
To hear the tidings of my friend 
Which every hour his couriers bring.' 

In I\Ic/noria/>i, cxxvi. 

In the Coming of ArtJitir WQ. have sketched another ideal mar- 
riage. 

" For saving I be joined 
To her that is the fairest under heaven, 
I seem as nothing in the mighty world, 
And cannot will my will, nor work my work. 

But were I joined with her, 
Then might we live together as one life. 
And reigning with one will in everything 
Have power on this dark land to lighten it. 
And power on this dead world to make it live." 

A striking contrast to this scene of llie Princess is that in 
Guinevere, 

" Lo ! I forgive thee, as Eternal God forgives." 

"When we shall have applied to all the problems of society 
the new and as yet unused elements which exist in womanhood, 
all results will be reached twice as quickly as they are now reached, 
all human work will be twice as quickly done, and then, perhaps, 
some new poet will write a new Princess.'''' — Stopford Brooke. 

Compare The Princess with Spenser's Artegal and Radigund, 
Faerie Qtccenc, v., cantos iv.-vi., and with Plato's Republic, 
Book v. 

In the early church, and in the days of chivalry, woman was 
credited with qualities which were characteristic of the two periods 
respectively. In the former she was made the ideal of wickedness, 
and in the latter the ideal of goodness,- — inhuman on the one 
hand, and superhuman on the other. Neither the priest nor the 
knight knew the true womanly nature. The present age is mak- 
ing a genuine attempt to understand woman's nature, and hence 



vii.J NOTES. 205 

woman's cause. A recent publication by Miss Georgiana Hill, 
entitled IVonien in English Life from Mcdiicval to Modern 
Times, is exceedingly interesting and instructive. 

What a beautiful example of devotion to all that makes for 
domestic sweetness, purity, and power, has been furnished the Eng- 
lish-people by their noble Victoria ! She has been pre-eminently 
queen of the home and empress of the affections which cluster 
there. It is not surprising, therefore, that she has been loved 
as no other English sovereign has been, and that, too, through 
a period unprecedented in the history of England's royalty. 

The two laureates whom she chose to honor as types of men 
and poets, and whose life and M'orks shed such lustre upon her 
reign, stand as conspicuous examples of the homely virtues which 
they praised in her and her people. The aged poet of Rydal in 
his laureate ode, written soon after her great bereavement, gives 
voice to the following sentiment : 

" Deign, Sovereign Mistress! to accept a lay. 
No Laureate offering of elaborate art; 
But salutation, taking its glad way 
From deep recesses of a loyal heart. 

Queen, Wife, and Mother! may all-judging Heaven 
Shower with a bounteous hand on thee and thine 

Felicity, — that only can be given 

On earth to goodness blessed by grace divine. 

As thou art wont, thy sovereignty adorn 

With woman's gentleness, yet firm and staid ; 

So shall that earthly crown thy brows have worn 
Be changed to one whose glory cannot fade." 

Wordsworth's .successor followed with a kindred note: 

" Revered, beloved — O you that hold 
A nobler office upon earth 
Than arms, or power of brain, or birth 
Could give the warrior kings of old, 



2o6 THE PRINCESS. [con. 

\'ictoria, — since your Royal grace 
To one of less desert allows 
This laurel greener from the brows 

Of him that uttered nothing base ; 

May children of our children say, 

Her court was pure; her life serene; 

A thousand claims to reverence closed 
In her as Mother, Wife, and Queen." 

CONCLUSION. 

1-28. So closed our tale, etc. In the notes to the Prologue, 
allusion was made to the criticisms upon The Princess because it 
lacked unity. In the Conclusion we are let into the secret of the 
poet's mind, and are shown the nature of things which led him to 
use the plan he did, — the only plan at all consistent with the con- 
ditions, A mechanical unity the poem lacks ; but in its place we 
have a vital unity, — a unity of growth, TJic Priiness is an organ- 
ism in which each part is at the same time the means and the end 
of all the rest. 

The strange diagonal in which the poet moves is due not to that 
which he creates, but to what he finds to be the basal elements of 
human nature, — the seriousness of the woman and the correspond- 
ing humor of the man in relation to certain phases of the great 
question of woman's cause, 

Mr, Dawson's comments upon this subject are to the point. 
He says: "Women, though quicker and wittier than men, are 
destitute of humor. They perceive the ridiculous, but never the 
humorous. They never possess that outsidedness of mind by 
which many men can contemplate their own absurdities, as it were 
from an outside standpoint, and enjoy them with quiet and indul- 
gent laughter." 

When Ruskin says that Shakespeare has no heroes, only hero- 



CON.] NOTES. 207 

ines, I think he meant to reveal the same idea ; and it is well 
known that Shakespeare's witty characters are women, while his 
humorous characters are men. 

It is evident that Tennyson not only pleased himself, but also 
his readers ; for although he revised the poem four times, he did not 
change the name, A Medley^ nor did he alter any main idea in the 
poem. He almost entirely recast the Conclusion in third edition, 
in order to make some of the critics see the rationale. That he 
pleased his readers is certain from the steady advance which the 
poem has made in the appreciation of the world. Mr. E. C. Sted- 
man says: "The poem is, as he called it 'A Medley,' constructed 
of ancient and modern materials, — a show of mediaeval pomp and 
movement, observed through an atmosphere of latter-day thought 
and emotion ; so varying, withal, in the scenes and language of its 
successive parts, that one may well conceive it to lie told by the 
group of thoroughbred men and maidens who, one after another, 
rehearse its cantos to beguile a festive summer's day. I do not 
sympathize with the criticisms to which it has been subjected upon 
this score, and which is but the old outcry of the French classicists 
against Victor Hugo and the romance school." 

36-48. But that there rose a shout, etc. After our Mid- 
summer Day's Dream we are awakened to the consciousness of time 
by the "shout;" and we find ourselves at Vivien-place, with the 
shadows becoming deeper on that land of peace. We are in Eng- 
land still — -the England of Tennyson — with 

" Gray twilight pour'd 
On dewy pastures, dewy trees. 
Softer than sleep — all things in order stored, 
A haunt of ancient Peace." 

The three characteristics of Tennyson's greatest poems are : 
the personal note, the English atmosphere, and tlie nineteenth- 
century thought. The second of these characteristics is perhaps 
the most universal with him, as with Wordsworth. To one familiar 
with these two poets, England becomes a new place. One voice 
is of the sea, the other of the mountains ; each a mighty voice. 
Here are two pictures of the south, — Lincolnshire : 



2o8 THE PRINCESS. [con. 

" The brook that loves 
To purl o'er matted cress and ribbed sand, 
Or dimple in the dark of rushy coves, 
Drawing into his narrow earthen urn. 

In every elbow and turn, 
The filter'd tribute of the rough woodland. 

The livelong bleat 
Of the thick fleeced sheep from wattled folds 

Upon the ridged wolds." 

Ode to JMemory. 

" A still salt pool, lock'd in with bars of sand ; 
Left on the shore ; that hears all night 
The plunging seas draw backward from the land 
Their moon-led waters white." 

I'he Palace of Ari. 

Now let us view^ two of the north, — Westmoreland : 

" But I would call thee beautiful ; for mild 
And soft, and gay, and Ijeautiful thou art 
Dear valley, having in thy face a smile, 
Though peaceful, full of gladness. Thou art pleased, 
Pleased with thy crags, and woody steeps, thy lake, 
Its one green island and its winding shores, 
The multitude of little rocky hills. 
Thy church, and cottages of mountain stone 
Clustered like stars, some few, but single most, 
And lurking dimly in their shy retreats. 
Or glancing at each other cheerful looks 
Like separated stars W'ith clouds between." 

The Recluse. 

Again, speaking of the Langdale Pikes, he says : 

"Those lusty twins, if here 
It were your lot to dwell, would soon become 
Your prized companions. Many are the notes 
Which in his tuneful course the wind draws forth 



cox.] NOTES. 209 

From rocks, woods, caverns, heaths, and dashing shores ; 

And well those lofty brethren bear their part 

In the wild concert, — chiefly when the storm 

Rides high : then all the upper air they fill 

With roaring sound, that ceases not to flow 

Like smoke along the level blast, 

In mighty current; theirs, too, is the song 

Of stream and headlong flood that seldom fails." 

Excursion^ ii. 
48. Cf. Wordsworth : 



and 



Inland, within a hollow vale, I stood," 
Fair star of evening, splendor of the west." 



49-71. Look there, etc. This allusion to the mock heroic 
gigantesque in French history is characteristic of Tennyson as a 
patriot. He thinks that he can best further the peace and honor 
of the world by making the peace and honor of England firm and 
true. Wordsworth, on the contrary, though no less an English- 
man, could take part in the ceremonies of " that great federal 
day" in France (July 14, 1790), and afterwards say of it : 

" Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive. 
But to be young was very heaven ! " 

Tennyson is the type of the conservative, Wordsworth of the 
Revolutionary, poet. One alludes to the struggles in France as — 

"The red fool fury of the Seine. 
The schoolboy heat. 
The l)lind hysterics of the Celt." 

The. other — 

" prayed that throughout earth upon all men 
The gift of tongues might fall, and power arrive 
From the four quarters of the winds, to df) 
For France what without help she could not do." 



^10 THE PRINCESS. [cox. 

Mr, Edward Dowden says, " To France more than to England 
the enslaved nations have turned their faces when they have striven 
to rend their bonds."' For Tennyson's idea of -freedom see : 

"You ask me, why, tho' ill at ease." 
" Love thou thy land." 
" Of old sat Freedom on the heights." 
" To the Queen." 

For Wordsworth's idea see : 

" I grieved for Buonaparte." 
" Fair star of evening, splendor of the West." 
" Festivals have I seen that were not names." 
" Inland, within a hollow vale, I stood." 
"There is a bondage worse, far worse, to bear." 

Mr. Wilfred Ward, in the A'ero Review, July, 1896, contributes 
some interesting talks with Tennyson. " \Valking one day on the 
down which stretches from Freshwater Bay to Freshwater Beacon, 
his conversation was chiefly of two subjects. One was the mad 
lawlessness of the Celtic character, which he illustrated by items of 
news from Ireland. . . . Paris was worse than London, he said, 
because of the Celtic element in the French character." This is of 
a piece with what he said about Gladstone. "Tell him I love him, 
but that I hate his Irish policy." 

Some critics have objected to these allusions to the French Revo- 
lution, but the spirit of Tennyson is strikingly revealed in them. 

Cf. Dowden, Studies in Literature, Mr. Tennyson and Mr. 
Browning. 

72-79. * Have patience,' I replied, etc. This note is com- 
mon in the poetry of the century. In Wordsworth's Excursion 
and Prelude; in Browning's Paracelsus, Rabbi Beu Ezra, and 
Old Pictures in Florence, and in all the longer poems of Tenny- 
son. Though Tennyson may be called a conservative rather than 
a movement poet, he believes in real progress. " TJte Princess 
is the full confession of the poet's faith." — Dowden. 



cox.] NOTES. 211 

"The old order changeth, yielding place to new, 
And God fulfils himself in many ways," etc. 

'J lie Passing of Arthtir. 
" Oh yet we trust that somehow good 

Will be the final goal of ill," etc. 

/// Mcmoriaiii^ liv. 
" No longer half akin to brute, 

For all we thought and loved and did. 
And hoped and suffered, is but seed," etc. 
/;/. i\Iemoriai)i^ cxxxi. 37-39. 

" Where is one that born of woman altogether can escape 
From the lower world within him, moods of tiger, or of ape? 
Man as yet is being made," etc. 

The Making of Mau. 

" Not in vain the distance beacons. Forward, forward, let us range, 
Let the great world spin forever down the ringing grooves of 
change." 

Locksley Hall. 

Cf. The Day Dream ^ llie Two 1 Alices, The. Golden Year, 'The 
Msion of Si 71, By an Evolutionist^ In the Children's Hospital. 

*' 'Tis a life-long toil till our lamp be leaven — 
The better ! W^hat's come to perfection perishes." 

Browning, Old Pictures in Florence. 

"The great hall which Merlin built ft)r Arthur is girded by four 
zones of symbolic sculpture; in the lowest zone, beasts are slaying 
men; in the second, men are slaying beasts; 

' And on the third are warriors, perfect men, 
And on the fourth are men with growing wings.' 

To work out the beast is the effort of long ages ; to attain to be 
' a perfect man ' is for those who shall follow us afar off ; to soar 
with wings is for the crowning race of the remotest future." 

Dow DEN. 



212 THE PRINCESS. [con. 

"It is in the growth and power and rights of personality that 
social progress consists." — Harris, Moral Evolution. 

In Benjamin Kidd's Social Evolution^ chapter ix,, we have a 
magnificent illustration of the fact which Tennyson everywhere 
insists upon, — that 

" Human E.voliition is not Primarily Intellectual.'^^ 
See also Professor George Harris, Moral Evolution. 
85. A great broad-shoulder'd genial Englishman. Cf. 
Aubrey de Vere, Sonnets in Memory of the Late Sir John Sim- 
eon, 1873: 

"The world external knew thee but in part; 
It saw and honored what was least in thee ; 
The loyal trust, the inborn courtesy; 
The ways so winning, yet so pure from art; 
The cordial welcome keen to all desert, — 
All save thine own ; the accost so frank and free; 
The public zeal that toiled, but not for fee. 
And shunned alike base praise and hireling's mart: 
These things men saw ; but deeper far than these 
The under-current of thy soul worked on 
Unvexed by surface-ripple, beam, or breeze, 
And, unbeheld, its way to ocean won: 
Life of thy life was still that Christian-Faith 
The sophist scorns. It failed thee not in death." 

Although Tennyson delighted to sketch women, the friendships 
which add such lustre to his poetry are friendships with men : 
Hallam, Maurice, Clough, Sir Walter Vivien, Edward Fitzgerald, 
James Spedding, The Lushingtons, William C. Ward, etc. The 
third cycle of /// Memoriam, ciii.-cxxxi., is the noblest tribute ever 
paid to the character of one man by another: 

" Nor ever narrowness or spite, 

Or villain fancy fleeting by, 
Drew in the expression of an eye, 
Where God and Nature met in light : 



cox.] NOTES. 213 

And thus he bore without abuse 

The grand old name of Gentleman, 
Defamed by every charlatan 

And soil'd with all ignoble use." — cxi. 

Cf. /;/ the Garden at Sivainstoji^ In the Valley at Cauteretz, To 
the Rev. F. D. Maurice, To G. Fitzgerald, In JMemoriatn, William 
George Ward, To J. S. 

96-101. A shout arose again, etc. Cf. The Passing of 
Arthur : 

"Then from the dawn it seem'd there came, but faint, 
As from beyond the limit of the world. 
Like the last echo born of a great cry, 
Sounds," etc. 

102-104. Why should not, etc. For a study of the changes 
that have taken place in the socal condition of England since The 
Princess was written, and the part which poets have had in these 
changes, Cf. chapters i., ii., vi., vii., in The life of the Spirit in 
the Modern English Poets. — ViDA D. SCUDDER. 

More light has been thrown by The Princess on the question of 
the relative position of the sexes than by all the express articles 
ever written on the subject in book or newspaper. — James II. 
Stirlixg. 



EDITIONS OF "THE PRINCESS 

(1847-1855) 

Until the Present Text was Adopted. 



First Edition, 1847, pp. 164. 

Second Edition, 1848, pp. 164. This edition was dedicated to 
Henry Lushington, and contained a few verbal changes. 

Third Edition, 1850, pp. 177. In this edition there were large 
additions. The songs were added, and the interlude introduced. 

Fourth Edition, 185 i, pp. 182. The poem was much changed 
in this edition by the introduction of the " weird seizures." The 
fourth song was changed to its present form, and the second stanza 
of the first song was omitted. The Prologue and Conclusion were 
remodelled. 

Fifth Edition, 1855, pp. 183. In this edition the final text was 
adopted. The lines 35-49 of the Prologue were first introduced ; 
and the second stanza of the first song, omitted in the previous 
edition, was restored. 



214 



REFERENCES: 

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL. 



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Brimley, G. Essays. 

Brooke, S. A. Tennyson : Llis Art and Relation to Modern 

Life. 
Canton, W. /« t/ie Lootsteps of the Poets. 
Church, A. J. Ln the Laureate's Country. 
Collins, C. Lllusfrations of Tennyson. 
Cooke, G. W. Poets and Problems. 
Dawson, S. E. The Princess : A Study. 
Dawson, W. J- Makers of ALodem English. 
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GOSSE, E. Early Victorian Literature. 
Hadley, J. Essays. ( 77ie Princess. ) 
Hallam, a. H. Poems, zuith Essay on the Lyrical Poems of 

Tennyson. 

215 



2i5 REFERENCES 

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HowiTT, \\'. Homes and Haunts of the British Poets. 

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Jennings, H. J. Lord Tennyson. 

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Lindsay, J, Essays. 

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Luce, JVL A Handbook to Tennyson's I Forks. 

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